


like real people do

by delsicle



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Blow Jobs, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Marvel 616/MCU Crossover, Past Abuse, Past Addiction, Past Character Death, Past Rape/Non-con, Pining, Porn with Feelings, Recovery, Recreational Drug Use, Superpowers, Violence, check the a/n for more detailed triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 05:57:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 64,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7672711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delsicle/pseuds/delsicle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis didn’t ask for a lot of things. He didn’t ask for his entire family to die in a car crash that may or may not have been his fault. He didn’t ask to get powers out of that accident, either, powers that eventually led him into a two-year relationship with a man who was far more than met the eye. But one night, he chose to ask for a replacement to a broken camera from someone he hadn’t spoken to in a year and a half. He did ask for that. And that kind of led to everything else.</p><p>Or, the sort-of Jessica Jones AU in which the dead stay where they belong, featuring Zayn as the high-powered lawyer with a hopeless crush on his assistant Liam, Niall as the constantly stoned but strangely insightful neighbor, Harry as Manhattan’s media darling, and Louis as the never-was hero who’s just trying to pick up the pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like real people do

**Author's Note:**

> This story…this story is something else, really. I started it with a clear outline of where I wanted it to go, what I wanted to happen, and somewhere down the line it developed a life of its own and went in a totally different (and more personal) direction than I had originally intended. And now, here we are. 
> 
> As the summary suggests, this story is based on the Marvel TV series Jessica Jones. If you are familiar with the series, you’ll notice I changed a few pretty major plot points of the show to better fit the story I wanted to tell, but you’ll still recognize many of the character roles and plot references. There are no Marvel characters featured in this fic, although there are a few references to the MCU. If you aren’t familiar with Marvel, though, you should still be able to understand everything. 
> 
> This fic also contains quite a few heavier topics that are important to the plot, but may be triggering. Past parental and domestic abuse is mentioned throughout and explicitly discussed a few times. There are mentions of past addiction (alcohol) throughout, and an explicit discussion once. There are some allusions to past non-con and sexual abuse, and a very small non-explicit flashback of this. (Also, none of the abuse involves HL as a couple.) There are a few past minor character deaths which are thoroughly discussed. There are a couple violent scenes and descriptions, and finally, there are recreational uses of marijuana and one teeny-tiny mention of a minor character using cocaine. I believe that’s all the triggers, my apologies if there is anything I’m missing. 
> 
> Finally, I’d like to give thanks to my beta Andrea, for dealing with my wild writing schedule and grammar mistakes and not complaining. Any additional mistakes are mine.

If there’s one thing Louis knew for certain, it’s that eventually, without fail, all human beings will fuck up.

It didn’t matter who they are, or how much money or influence they had, and it especially didn’t matter how much they have to lose, and how careful, at least in theory, they needed to be. Eventually, they would fuck up. An email would be sent to the wrong person and a trust fund manager would become a prisoner within a month, locked away on illegal trading charges. A university athlete would tell the wrong friend of a friend about the doping needles in their gym bag, and their scholarship and any chance of a future would vanish overnight. Or, one of New York’s most high-powered businessmen would go on having a year-long affair, only one night to meet his lover in a Chelsea brownstone and forget to close the bedroom curtains.

Of course, that particular example could go unnoticed. Manhattan was full of voyeurs who rarely opened their lips, after all, and unless you looked far too long, there was no exact way of telling that the tall man in the half-unbuttoned dress shirt in the sixth floor apartment bedroom was seen just five hours earlier at a charity luncheon, standing arm in arm with a woman that was definitely not being laid on the bed at the moment. Unless you kept photos of this man in your desk, followed him for weeks as he dashed into this same apartment building every Monday and Thursday night, week after week, and were being paid a lot of money by his wife to capture the exact moment he would enviably fuck up, the exact moment those ugly, faded red curtains failed to hide a scandal. Which was precisely what Louis had done.

Now, sitting on the balcony of an otherwise abandoned apartment unit across the street, he finally got to finish what he had been assigned to start. Setting down his paper coffee cup and instead reaching for the long-lens camera at his feet, he moved onto his knees, leaning forward and aiming the camera until he could clearly see the window through the viewer, adjusting a few dials until the scene inside came into clearer view. He exhaled slowly as he took the first shot, the crisp click of the camera sounding in time with the woman inside leaning in to kiss the man, her long blonde hair obscuring most of her face. A moment later, there was another click when they started moving away, that damned hair still hiding most of her identity. He huffed and lowered the camera, just watching, keeping a finger on the capture as he did so. No use wasting his time with a bunch of images that wouldn’t do him any good.

A thin gust of wind floated past, weaving its way through his hair, casting bits of it into his eyes, snaking its way down the loose scoop of his shirt. It was nearly summer, but the city had yet to heat up to its usual unbearable humidity, instead leaving everything chilled and still, like the sidewalks and buildings themselves were just…waiting for something.

Louis’s finger twitched involuntarily on the capture as he continued to watch the rather vanilla scene play out in the bedroom across the street. He balanced the large camera in one hand as he reached up to get the hair out of his eyes. Just because he had _offered_ to be here all night didn’t mean he _wanted_ to be.

And then, almost like the universe had decided to go easy on him, the woman reached up with both hands and pushed her hair back, over her shoulders, away from her face. Just as quickly as she did it, Louis had the camera hefted up again, his finger already pressing down on the capture.

The click sounded in his ears, along with the next one, and the one after that, each one bringing an image of exposed faces and naked bodies, exactly as had been requested.

He finished the series of shots, slowly moving the camera away from his face to just observe for another moment. The curtains were still open, the two people inside were still oblivious, the rest of the city was still moving around without a care. And on the camera in his hands was all he needed to get another paycheck and silently ruin someone else’s life.

At least someone hadn’t fucked up tonight.

*******

Louis was woken up by his phone the next morning.

His jeans from last night were still on, and the top half of his face was shoved into the pillow, the same position it had been in when he had crashed there a few hours earlier. It wasn’t anything odd about that, not when he’d done the exact same thing almost every single morning after a late night of work for the past year.  What _was_ odd was that his alarm hadn’t even gone off yet, so clearly that meant it was both far too early to be up and also way before his open-to-client-calls business hours were scheduled to start.

“Fuck’s sake,” he murmured, sliding his hand over the surface of the bedside table, palm skipping over the sizable crack in the middle of it that was currently being held together with a full roll of tape, and finally found his vibrating phone amongst the piles of papers he desperately needed to file away.

As he got a hold of his phone, he felt tempted to just throw it back across the room and doze off again, but, well, maybe this was important. Also, he really didn’t want to risk throwing too hard and having to explain to his landlord why there was a smartphone-sized hole in his brick bedroom wall.

“Alias Investigation,” he said as he picked up, rolling onto his back and blinking up at the permanently stained ceiling as he tucked one hand behind his head.

“Louis, hey,” a thick Brooklyn-accented voice trickled out of the speaker, alongside a cluster of static, “It’s Nico,”

“Oh, hey,” he exhaled at the voice of one of the main repairmen at the corner electronic store in the neighborhood, rather than an early morning client who couldn’t read the business hours on his card, “How’s it going over there?”

“For me? Fine. For you, not so much,”

Well. That couldn’t be…good.

“What’s up?”

“Listen, I’ve seen some weird shit from you before, but…this thing’s fucking shattered from the inside out, man. What the hell did you do it?”

 _Shit._ Louis squeezed his eyes shut and turned over to his side, pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand as he cradled the phone in the other, “ _Nothing_ ,”

Well, okay. That wasn’t totally true. Last week he’d had a difficult assignment, he’d been stressed, maybe on the way home he’d _squeezed_ his best camera a little too hard. Enough for it to have a few cracks and not to turn on when he got home. But in hindsight that had probably caused more damage than he had anticipated. He did have a tendency to break things beyond repair.

“Nothing? Fuck, man, you sure you didn’t—“

“No. There was nothing,” he cut in. He had already gotten out of bed, pacing towards the open doorway and out into the front hallway, “What can you do with it, then?”

“Jesus, I don’t know. You still got the receipt for this thing?”

“No, of course I don’t have the fucking receipt for it,” he passed the short front hallway—he really needed to replace that broken glass panel in his door—and went into the living room, sweeping piles of paper-clipped documents and folders off to the edges of his desk so he could look at the thick calendar book still open in front of his computer. Right there, neatly marked down with black ink in the slot for the upcoming Saturday, was the name of a long-standing client, a time, a location, and the name of the required camera. The camera that he had broken, and that he was planning on picking up before the appointment, fixed to perfection.

_Damn it._

“No receipts? Well then I guess it’s your problem. Gonna have to replace it,”

“Yeah, well, I guess I will,” he mumbled, lifting his thumb to his mouth and biting a loose hangnail as he crossed the cluttered living area again. He caught sight of his smaller camera—the only working long-lens one he had now—sitting on the corner of his desk, still loaded with the pictures from the previous night. It seemed insignificant now that he was facing losing one of his best clients over _a goddamn camera_.

“Hey, you still gonna pay me for this, right?” Nico’s voice trickled back through the phone, “I had to work on it for like three fucking days, man,”  

“Of course I will. Next time you need to blackmail someone, you give me a call. Goodbye,”

He hung up the call and dropped the phone onto the floor, watching it bounce off the marked-up wood, before leaning his forehead against the nearest wall. He felt tempted to lift up one of his fists and push it deep into the cheap drywall, but—he already had enough problems for the day as it was. So he took a deep breath and went into the kitchen instead.

But naturally, because nothing in his life ever went according to plan, he wasn’t alone. As soon as he entered the kitchen, he glanced over at the little, creaky table next to the window that hadn’t opened in six months, and saw there was a man with bright blond highlights sitting there, staring straight ahead with glazed-over eyes, eating grape jelly straight out of the jar with a fork. Louis blinked at him, then just shook his head and moved further into the room.

“Morning, Niall,”

The blonde at his table jolted, hacking around the fork that was clamped in his mouth.

“Jesus,” he coughed, pulling the fork out of his mouth and rubbing his throat, “What the fuck are you doing in my apartment?”

“Actually, this is _my_ apartment,” Louis replied, opening the door of his fridge and leaning down to look inside. He had a couple of pears in his crisper that were probably still okay to eat, and about half a dozen partially consumed containers of take-out stacked on the top shelf. Part of him still itched for the bottle of rum he used to keep on the kitchen counter for a liquid breakfast, but of course he didn’t have any. Not anymore.

“Huh,” Niall muttered behind him, “When---oh. I was wondering when I got a window installed in my door. And when I broke it,”

“Easy enough mistake,” Louis stared down the barren food options one more time before settling on the carton of apple juice shoved towards the back of the fridge and a decently clean glass from the sink.  

“Are you high right now?” he asked as he sat down across from his misplaced neighbor.

“Um,” Niall held his hand out in front of his face and squinted, “Um,”

“You know what, don’t answer that,”

“Well, what about you? Are you drunk?”

“I haven’t been drunk in six months. You know that,”

“Well. Never hurts to ask,” Niall squinted into some point in the distance and scratched the dark stubble on his chin that almost matched the roots of his hair, “Oh, by the way, could you do that thing to my door where you just, like, kick it in? Or snap the doorknob off or something? ‘Cause I think I left my keys in a park fountain last night. And maybe my credit cards, too. But I think those might have been expired for a year, anyways,”

Louis shrugged, “Yeah, sure, just let me finish my breakfast,”

He took a long swig of his drink, and then set it back down and swiped at his sleep-sore eyes. Niall picked up his fork again, going back to the jelly jar still in front of him, and Louis stayed silent, letting him go at it, instead turning towards the unmovable window, pulling aside one of the threadbare curtains to look out through the white-streaked glass. As usual, there was nothing outside but an empty alleyway and a few young kids and their mothers jogging down the street, probably on their way to school.

“You should eat something with that,” Niall mumbled from across the table, the fork still wedged between his lips.

“That’s a great idea,” Louis said, reaching for his glass again and drinking deeply as he watched the street. Nothing had changed at all in the last few seconds. The same kids, the same scraggly trees on the edges of the sidewalks, the same emptiness where it should be.

Really, he had better things to think about. He had to download the digital copies of the pictures from last night and print out the physical prints and negatives, he would have to take client calls in a just a few hours, and before everything else, he would have to go visit his boss—the closest thing he had to a boss, anyways—to figure out this camera situation.

Still. He just kept looking out the window, watching, observing, listening to the white noise of Niall continuing to lick jelly off his fork from across the table. He would get back to his life in a few minutes. For now, it couldn’t hurt to check that the dead were staying dead and the past wasn’t attempting to make a reappearance.

*******

As a general rule, Louis liked to avoid the larger, wealthier areas of the city. It wasn’t exactly that far of a commute from his apartment—nothing really felt like that long of a commute anymore, unless he had to go over to Queens or Brooklyn for an assignment—or difficult to navigate. The opposite, really. He’d been there too many times, knew some of the alleys and sidewalks and hotels far too well for his own liking. So he stayed away, only coming down for three reasons: to fulfill an assignment, to pick up lunch at that one Ethiopian shop on days when it seemed impossible to make it through his day without a carton of _injera_ and _atkilt wot_ , or, most often, to stop into the tall, sleek building that housed about two dozen independent offices, including one of the city’s newest and yet more respected law firms.

On the tenth floor of the building, he passed by the large silver and white plaque on the wall spelling out Malik & Edwards and strolled into the rest of the office, the sparkling white walls and floors blending into each other and only broken up by a giant silver desk in the center of the reception room, where a small army of receptionists typed away at their computers. Louis yawned and tapped his knuckles lightly on the counter, right in front of one of the more familiar receptionists.

“Morning, Tina,” Louis chirped, pulling his sunglasses off his eyes and continuing to stride straight past the front desk, “Just stopping in to say hi, no need to buzz me in,”

The secretary at the desk raised her head and then quickly pulled herself out of her seat. She jogged after him, the sound of her heels clicking against the polished tile trailing behind him as he attempted to make his stride longer.

“Mr. Tomlinson, Mr. Malik is in a conference call with a client at the moment—“ she called, but he just waved a hand over his shoulder.

“Oh, good, then he’ll have to wait a few minutes to yell at me,” he said, already closing in on the door clearly printed with Zayn’s name. The frantic sound of Tina’s heels intensified as his hand closed over the knob and he pushed it open.

“Well, if we can always go the more traditional route, but if you really want to cut your loses here I’d suggest—“

He only caught the beginning of the sentence when the familiar voice cut off. Inside the large office, his boss—if you could even call Zayn that--was alone, standing behind his desk, hands held out in mid-gesture, his head turned towards the door.

“Louis. Hello,” he said flatly, dropping one hand to push up the sleeve of his purple button-down, adding “Lovely to see you,” in a voice that suggested anything otherwise.

Tina chose that moment to catch up with him, grabbing the doorway with one manicured hand and leaning in, hissing, “I tried to tell him to wait,”

“No, no, it’s—it’s fine, Tina, really,” Zayn sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers, “Mr. Gibbs, I’m so sorry, but I need to call you back in ten minutes. I—one of my employees just walked in,”

A short sound of protest that vaguely sounded like a distressed human voice blurted out of the office phone speaker, and then Zayn pressed a button on the receiver abruptly, cutting it off.

“So I’m a real employee now?” Louis asked as he crossed the office and sat down in one of the large armchairs that lined the opposite wall, “Does that mean I get health insurance?”

“If you were fully employed by me I would’ve fired you a long time ago,” Zayn snapped, then closed his eyes, “Can you please just tell me why you’re here so I can move on with my job? My actual job?”

“Of course, babe,” Louis laced his fingers together and set them behind his head, leaning back into the chair, “You need to pay me a little early,”

“And why is that?”

“I broke my camera last week. Well, one of them. My best one. Longest lens, highest quality. You know, for special jobs,”

“Special jobs,” Zayn repeated flatly.

“Yes,” Louis said, “And I actually do have a very _special_ job coming up this weekend, so I need you to pay me so I can get a new one,”

“Don’t you have others? Isn’t that a requirement for your line of work?”

“Well, yes, but…nothing that will quite work, I’m afraid,” he scratched the side of his nose absentmindedly, “Some of my clients are quite picky, I’m sure you can relate,”

“I see,” Zayn leaned across his desk, pressing his fingertips firmly into the desk as he did so, “My answer is no,”

“I’m sorry?”

“I said, no, Louis, I’m not paying you early. You get paid in a week and a half, I’m not moving that up _again_ ,”

“Well, the least you can do is just buy me a new one outright,”

“No. Once again, no. As you like to keep reminding me, you’re technically independent. But you give some of my clients a lot of valuable information, information that usually helps me with their cases, and so I ignore all of your highly questionable business practices, keep recommending you _and_ give you a standard salary on top of individual payments. But that does not make you my employee, and therefore, I don’t need to take care of your…personal expenses,”

“It’s not personal,”

“To me it might as well be,”

The door opened suddenly, and Louis rolled his neck in the direction of the sound while Zayn rapidly pulled himself off the desk and straightened his tie. Which made sense when Louis saw that Zayn’s assistant, Liam, was poking his head in the door, a small, nervous smile on his face.

“Sorry, sir, but Mr. Gibbs is still on the line, and he’s really insisting you continue your earlier meeting as soon as possible,”

“Of course,” Zayn smiled, “Tell him I’m just finishing up,”

“Alright,” Liam nodded, “And then would you like me to file those claims we got in this morning?”

“No, why don’t you wait to do them during lunch? My lunch. Yes, my lunch. We’ll have lunch together. And then you can file those claims…here,”

“Alright, if you want,” Liam turned to the side, smiling wider when he caught sight of Louis, “Oh, hello again, Mr. Tomlinson. Can I get you something? Coffee? Tea? The building’s cafeteria just got a smoothie bar, if you’re willing to wait a few minutes,”

“That won’t be necessary, I was just leaving,” Louis said, “But you’d better get Zayn here some ice water, he looks a bit parched,”

“I am _fine_ ,” Zayn snapped, and then cleared his throat, “I mean, I’m fine. You don’t have to do that,”

“Oh, alright, then,” Liam agreed easily, still smiling. Louis had literally never seen Liam _not_ smiling, “Lunch?”

“Yes, yes, I’ll see you at lunch. Great work, as always,”

The door closed then, and Louis turned back to Zayn, “You know, when most men have crushes on their secretaries for this long, they’re half-way through a divorce by now,”

“Liam is not my secretary,” Zayn pointed out a little too quickly, “He’s—he’s a personal assistant. He’s learning about the field. You know he went to Columbia Law? He’s very smart,”

“You’re not helping your case,”

“I need you to leave,” Zayn said, rubbing his forehead “And how about this? I’ll get you a new camera in a few weeks, whatever kind you want, when you’ll get the rest of your paycheck,”

“But I need it this weekend—“

“I don’t care. You know why I don’t care? Because I don’t have any clients listed down as currently needed your services, so it’s an independent job. Which means I don’t have to worry about it. Which means you’ll have to handle it yourself. Borrow something from a friend, steal it, I don’t care. Have a nice day,”

Louis opened his mouth again to argue, but Zayn had already started punching at the buttons on his office phone, ready to start his call again.

Louis slumped further into his chair, tapping his foot against the floor, enough to earn him a quick glare from Zayn as he pressed one last button and picked up the phone, “Hi, sorry about that. Where were we? Oh, yes, right—“

As he tuned Zayn’s call out—he wouldn’t kick him out, he knew that much—he began to think about what he could do next. Borrow it? Like he had anyone to borrow it from. Steal it? Where was he going to get exactly what he needed—

He paused, his foot pausing as it lifted off the floor. That…that was an idea…

“Well,” he said loudly, “It’s been lovely as always,”

He strolled quickly to the door, opened it up and stepped into the outside. Yes, his idea would work. _It had_ to.

He probably should’ve just walked straight out then, now that he had no reason to hang around, but…there weren’t any people milling around outside, so instead he turned back to Zayn.

“Oh, you should get your floor redone, by the way,” he called. Zayn glanced up, covering one side of his phone and opening his mouth, just in time to see Louis bring down his foot firmly enough on the tile that it sent a spider web of cracks racing across the marble at his feet, “It’s looking a little banged up,”

*******

The accident was not the beginning.

It wasn’t the end, either. It was a beginning, and an end, wrapped together, perfectly. Just one of many. But it was still important.

It went something like this.

Ten years ago, Louis’s whole family left the house in one car, because it was nice and sunny and the twins had wanted to go to the zoo, so they were going to go there and have a picnic afterwards. At exactly twelve past eleven, his mother crossed an intersection a little too early at the same time a garbage truck was crossing from the opposite direction, fast. Fast enough to crumple the damn car like it was paper. Fast enough for nearly everyone in the car to die on impact.

Nearly.

Because for whatever reason, Louis was able to push his way out of the mangled remains of the car and crawl to the side of the road. He passed out, and then woke up in the hospital with a broken nose and half a dozen bruises and not much else.

Later the police would ponder how lucky it was that the steel frame of the ruined car seemed to form a hole the perfect size for a not particularly big teenage boy to crawl out of. Later the doctors at the hospital would puzzle over how the only survivor of an otherwise fatal crash was able to get out with almost no physical damage.

The police didn’t notice the hand imprints that were pushed into the mangled metal. The doctors didn’t draw blood; they didn’t notice the undoubtedly shifted chromosomes in Louis’s system. That was fine, really. Maybe if they had they wouldn’t have let him leave the hospital and sent him to some lab in the countryside. But they didn’t. They let him go.

Here was the thing, though. On countless occasions he would remember that day, and everything that had happened, he would dissect every detail, try to call up anything that would make it easier.

But most of the time, all he could think was that it was his fault. It didn’t matter how, all the memories produced different reasons. He slept in. He spent too much time fixing his hair in the bathroom. He forgot to get the water bottles ready the first time his mum asked him and had to go back into the house to get them. All of those things meant that they left the house later than planned.

Sometimes he would think that it was his fault because maybe he asked them to pull over once because he’d dropped his phone under the seat and needed to dig it out, or maybe he had been talking to his mum, distracting her at the stop sign.

Sometimes he would come up with multiple reasons. Multiple reasons why the universe made them cross that intersection at exactly the wrong time, and all of them pointed back to Louis. Which made sense, really.

Because if the accident was his fault, his own powers were his fault, too.

And that meant that everything that came afterwards was his fault, too.

*******

About half-way up scaling one of the tallest and nicest apartment buildings in the city, Louis started to entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t the greatest decision. After all, this was a wealthy neighborhood, which meant a lot of people who were wary of loud noises, which in turn meant he’d probably get caught. He wasn’t worried about the whole staying-in-jail part of it, because despite all the shit they gave each other, Zayn would probably just end up getting him out of it before he was even in a cell. He was just worried that if any future clients found out he couldn’t handle his own shit without getting caught, how could they trust him to take care of their own cases? His career would be ruined. And he _really_ liked being able to eat.

Or he could die doing this. Yeah, there was the very, very real possibly he could die, but that was a bit of an afterthought.

Still, he kind didn’t have a choice. He needed a camera, and there was almost definitely one waiting for him in this building. He might be able to get buzzed in at the front desk if someone was actually home, but as far as he knew the apartment he sought was empty, and that’s the way he wanted things. So, the scale-building route was going to have to do.

He loosened his grip the window frame he was clutching onto and bent his knees, aiming his eyes up to a nearly identical window a couple floors up. He pushed off, his body jolting all the way, the crisp crack sounding from below him. He’d probably cracked that window ledge pretty bad. Oops.

He held on tight to the next window frame, lifting himself up until he had the toes of his boots on the slick marble again. He took a breath, and then looked up. Only a few more jumps and he’d be on the top of the building, home free.

His destination, the penthouse, ended up being the easiest to jump onto, mostly because of the balcony. It wasn’t a rickety little structure like the ones on the lower floors, but instead a big, spacious area that was about three times the size of his own bedroom, filled with designer outdoor furniture and surrounded with a thick stone barrier that was easy to grip unto. In one quick, clean leap, he had both arms hanging onto the barrier, and began steadily pulling the rest of his body over it.

Of course, just as Louis had one leg straddling the barrier and the other still hanging over the edge, ready to be pulled over, a wave of light washed over his eyes, followed by the sound of a sliding door being opened. Out of instinct he grabbed back onto the stone and began pulling his other leg back over, just so he could jump back down before anything happened.

“Stay put,” a voice called out from the other side of the balcony, and at the sound, Louis blinked and lifted his hand over his eyes, shielding them against the glare of the outdoor lights.

There was a man leaning against the open doorway, dressed in a thin cream-white sweater and black jeans, his long legs crossed. He didn’t look particularly irritated, angry, or even surprised to see Louis, just looked on in calm observation while he gripped one ring-laden hand around a half-full wine glass and kept the other tucked into his front pocket.

Well. He was home after all. So much for Louis’ plan.

“It’s just…you’re a few thousand feet up,” he continued, “Kind of a high jump,”

Louis realized a little too slowly that he was still awkwardly straddling the balcony barrier, and that for some reason he hadn’t moved to fix that.

“Oh. Right. Um,” he got out, “Hi, Harry,”

“Hi,” Harry returned, “Is there a reason you’re on my balcony?”

“Is there a reason you’re home right now?”

“Because it’s midnight on a Wednesday,”

“Well I—I thought you’d be at that—that thing. That fundraiser thing,”

Harry raised an eyebrow, “What, the New York Young Artist’s Gala?”

“Um—yeah,”

“How did you know I’d be there?”

_Um._

“I mentioned it on my show this morning,” he continued, barely repressing a smile, “Is it because you listen to my show?”

“No. No, I don’t—“

“I was there, if you want to know. But I left early. Enough to get some pictures and not much else,” he took a long sip of his wine, still watching him over the edge of his glass, “Now, why are you on my balcony?”

“I needed something,”

He closed his eyes and shook his head, “Of course you did,”

Before Louis could defend himself—although, what did he really have to work with—Harry was turning back around, ready to go back inside.

“Why don’t you come inside, it’s cold out,” he said, leaving the door open behind him as he stepped fully back into the apartment. Louis blinked at the space where he had once been, at the open door, just not understanding why he had just been _invited inside, what the hell_.

He looked back out to the dark, light-choked outline of the rest of the city, briefly considering just going with his original plan to jump back down again, before eventually pulling both legs over the barrier and jogging inside, pulling the door closed behind him. He did come here because he needed something, after all. Might as well get it.

The inside of Harry’s apartment was the same as it had always been, at least in its layout. Big living room, leading to an open kitchen, and just out of sight, he knew there was a short hallway with a couple bedrooms and a laundry room. The only differences were the new chairs in the living room and the colors of the flowers on the various tables.

“I’m surprised you knew where I lived,” Harry said from his place in the kitchen, his back turned from the rest of the apartment.

“I’ve been here before,” Louis replied. He still hadn’t moved out of the living room, “Or did you forget I helped you move in here?”

“Still, I could’ve found a different place,” Harry continued, still not turning around, “I mean, that can happen in a year and a half,”

Okay, low blow.

“I knew you wouldn’t, though,” Louis shrugged. He got his feet to start moving, scuffling across the soft living room carpet and onto the hardwood divide of the kitchen, “You liked that damn balcony too much. And the view of the river,”

This made Harry pause and finally turn around, tilting his head.

“Right, of course,” he shook his head, and then he was turned around again, “Sit down, I’ll get you a drink,”

“Oh, I’m not staying,”

“That’s too bad. Because I’m not going to give you whatever you want until you sit down and let me get you some wine,”

He should—he should really leave.

Instead, he stepped slowly, carefully, over the perfect white carpet of the living room and onto the bright, freshly scrubbed tiles of the kitchen.

“Fine,” he said, a little too loudly, then pulled out one of the white bar stools, the legs scraping loudly against the tile, and lowered himself onto it, “And no wine,”

“Alright. I think I have some beer, too…”

“No, no, just…water, if you have it,” he drummed his fingers on the countertop and halted abruptly when finally, Harry turned around to look at him.

“Did you…stop drinking?” 

“Oh, yeah. Um. Recently,”

Harry raised an eyebrow but went over to cabinet for a new glass with a simple, “Alright,”

He took entirely too long getting Louis’s water. He opened each cabinet slowly, going through three different doors before he found the tall glasses, like he didn’t know his way around his own kitchen. He hummed softly as he pressed the edge of the glass to the ice dispenser on the fridge, tilting his head to the side as he switched the dispenser to churn out a stream of cold water. He looked so at ease, moving so elegantly through all the actions, still very much in his own world.

Louis still wanted to leave immediately.

Eventually, Harry set the water in front of Louis with a pointed _click_ on the countertop, and then set his elbows on the marble, leaning forward and loosely locking his fingers together.

“You look better,” he said after a beat.

And, God, Louis was not ready for smalltalk. Not after a year and a half of radio silence, two years before that of…well, of things that kind of wrecked everything else.

“Well. I guess I had a lot of room for improvement,” he replied vaguely before picking up his water and attempting to chug all of it in one go.

“No, really, you do,” Harry insisted, “Your dark circles look better. And you look a lot stronger,”

“I’m always strong, love, that’s kind of my thing,”

Harry closed his eyes and pressed his lips together. It vaguely looked it like he was trying not to laugh.

“How’s school going, then?” he continued, once he had recovered, “It must almost be time for summer holidays, right?”

Well, shit. Did Harry honestly think after everything, he could just pick up and go back to doing what he was doing? Probably not. More than likely, this was just his way of trying to figure out where Louis was. By starting with where he definitely was not.

“I’m not--I’m not doing that anymore,” Louis finally said, and Harry just nodded tightly, like it was exactly what he was expecting to hear.

“That’s too bad,” he said, “You loved teaching so much,”

“Yeah. Well,” Louis rolled his shoulders back, feeling like he needed to prove himself, “I like my job now just fine. And I’m making enough, so,”

Harry blinked, his fingers tight on the stem of the glass in front of him, spinning it slowly, his eyes fixed firmly on the movement.

“I’m a private investigator,” Louis continued, “In case you were wondering,”

“That’s—interesting,” Harry said slowly, and then looked back up, “What, exactly—what are you doing with that?”

“I don’t know. I follow shitty people around and take pictures of them, track their emails. Sometimes I get missing person’s cases and it’s always girls at their ex-boyfriend’s apartments. It’s easy enough,”

Harry wasn’t looking at him again, so he took the opportunity to down the rest of his water, set the glass down, and push it across the countertop.

“Okay, Styles,” he said, “I’ve sat down, I’ve had my drink, I think it’s time I get what I needed so I can head out,”

Harry jumped slightly, like being pulled from a thought, and then he glanced at the empty, wet glass in the center of the counter and then back at Louis.

“Um,” he got out, “What do you need, exactly?”

“A camera. I broke mine and I need something for this weekend,”

“Oh,” he said, “Okay, that’s easy enough. What kind do you need, exactly?”

“Brand doesn’t really matter. But I need long reaching lens, fast capture, high definition. Preferably something that works well in the dark,”

Harry tilted his head and blinked at one of the walls, rubbing his chin with his knuckles.

“It’s fine if you don’t,” Louis said quickly, “I’ll figure something else out,”

“No, no, I actually think I have something like that. I just don’t know if it’ll work but..I guess I can see,”

“Alright,” Louis folded his hands in front of him, “If you want to go get that, I’ll wait,”

“Give me a minute, then,” Harry sighed, already moving out of the kitchen, “And don’t you dare try to run off, if you do, I’ll know,”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,”

Louis tapped the counter over and over while he waited for Harry to return. He was so close to getting everything over with. He seriously considered running off.

Harry emerged from his hallway a few minutes later with a large, pale leather bag in his hands, and crossed the room to set it down on the countertop, right in front of Louis.

“I’ve only used this one once, and it wasn’t for anything important, but…just look at it, I guess?”

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Louis grabbed one of the zippers and undid it, pulling out the contents inside.

Well, shit. He hadn’t expected it to be _this_ nice.

He turned the camera over in his hands, felt the weight of it, admired it. It had everything his old one had, but it was shiner, more compact, the lens was wider, the different settings on the side were far more plentiful than he was used to.

Perfect. It was fucking perfect.

“Oh, yeah,” he finally said, “Yeah, this’ll work, for sure,”

“Great,” Harry replied, “I can pack it up, then,”

“And then I’ll be out of your hair forever,” Louis said, holding the camera out. Harry blinked at him, slowly accepting the device.

“Right,”

He took his time tucking it back in its case and zipping it up. When it was packed up, Louis reached out for it, but Harry pushed it just out of his reach.

“One last condition,”

“I won’t break it, I promise,”

“Oh, I don’t care about that,” Harry said, “Just, when you’re finished with it, broken or not, I’d like you to take it back here,”

“Was planning on that anyways, you know,”

“While I’m _home_ ,”

Louis stared at him, his hands still wide, waiting to collect what he came for. Harry stared back. He wasn’t backing down, apparently.

“Okay,” Louis relented, “I promise, I promise,”

Harry pushed the bag back across the counter, and Louis immediately grabbed it, pressing it to his chest. As he did, Harry kept watching him, looking more curious than anything.

It had been too long since they’d even been in the same room. Even Louis could acknowledge that.

Finally, Harry let his shoulders drop and turned away, pointedly not looking at him.

“Thanks for stopping by, Louis,”

He still had his back turned when Louis retreated back through the apartment, onto the balcony, and back down, leaving exactly the way he had arrived.

*******

Louis got to his Saturday assignment late. It wasn’t exactly his fault, he’d just gotten back from getting some groceries and had found Niall lying face-down in their hallway with no shirt on, so naturally he had to do the neighborly thing and haul him up, kick in his already broken door, carry him to bed, and leave him some water. By the time he was done and had gone into his apartment to put away his groceries and get Harry’s camera bag, the sky was dark enough that getting downtown was a whole new challenge, and finding a way to scale up to the rooftop of the marked building was even worse. He almost fell twice because he couldn’t find a decent foothold in the side of the building. After it almost happened a third time, he began to think about how bloody useless his abilities were. Really, what good was it that he could rip up the foundation of the Central Park fountain if he wanted to if one little unplanned ten-story stumble would do him in?

Somehow, at last, he made it to the rooftop and settled in, putting his usual coffee cup down to the side, and then dug through the camera bag. Harry’s bag was obviously much nicer than his normal one, made of soft, spotless leather and lots of roomy pockets filled with extra memory chips, differently sized straps, cleaning wipes and spray. The camera itself was nestled in the middle, wrapped in another soft cloth, and he took it out delicately and turned it over in his hands, making sure it was charged properly and had a fresh chip in it. Of course it did. Harry probably made sure it did before he gave it to Louis. He would.

After a few practice shots, the assigned time rolled around and Louis started his work. Despite the importance his client had placed on this job, it really wasn’t too bad. It helped that weather was finally warming up, and about half way through the job Louis took off his jacket and just stayed in his vest for the remainder of the shoot. The pictures were easy enough, mostly because despite how much he was being paid for this, it was mind-numbingly easy. A pair of men apparently met on the same street corner every night, one of them walking on foot, the other taking a taxi. One of them wore always wore a bright red scarf, and they exchanged a handshake and a briefcase filled with insider trading information.

The scarf was what really got him about this case. Really, the level of stupidity he discovered in his job.

After a few shots—man walking down the sidewalk, the other getting out of the cab, the rifling through the briefcase, the strolling away in separate directions—he figured he’d done his part for now. This is the first night in a series of weeks, after all, he would need more than one set to solidify the evidence. He’d drop these pictures off in a few days, and then return the following weekend for another round. By then his paycheck would be in, along with the replacement camera Zayn had promised him. Good.

With one last quick scan of the street belong, he finished his coffee, threw his jacket back on, and carefully packed his bag up. He slipped the strap over his shoulder and then strolled over to the edge of the building, so he could jump down and begin his commute home.

He didn’t realize he was going the wrong way until about halfway down the third block. It was a slow realization, the kind that made the world pause around him as he stopped walking and blinked twice. Even without street signs, he knew this was the old neighborhood, the one where he used to live before everything. He must not have realized his assignment was so close. It had been a little while, after all.

He turned around, away from the line of old apartment buildings across the street—the one he used to live in was on the next street, no use looking for it here—only to come face-to-face with his own reflection in the storefront window of the building behind him. It was a restaurant, Italian food, small, family-owned, the kind that had mismatched chairs and candles of various heights sitting on the top of each table. The cursive print painted on the glass is chipped badly, and Louis vaguely remembered coming here a few times after work to pick up some cheap pasta.

Of course, he hadn’t been back in years. This was the type place _he_ would have hated.

Standing in front of the building now, he crosses his arms against a nonexistent chill. Memories didn’t come as often now, mostly because he went out of the way to avoid them, but they still arrived every once in a while, floating through his brain like a passing hurricane. Usually, they came with the sound of _his_ voice, as they do now, calm and smooth and commanding, so real that Louis could almost feel the warning squeeze on the back of his neck that usually accompanied it, feel the hiss of bitter air passing his ear as familiar words were whispered to him.

“Smile pretty for me, darling. That’s a good boy,”

Louis swallows and physically shakes his head, his eyes watering. He rubs his thick-feeling throat and glances left, right, over his shoulder. Finally, he whispers to himself, “Charles, Willow Grove, Shade. Charles, Willow Grove, Shade…”

He blinks roughly, looking back at his own reflection in the thick glass. He reaches up, pushing his hair back over his forward, watching his mouth purse as he breaths out. Then, he fixes his face into a firm frown, the kind that creases and pinches his face, because he can, he fucking can, and then practically jolts back down the block, away from the neighborhood, back home.

*******

“Hello?”

Louis flicked his gaze up to the creamy white ceiling of the hallway and bounced on his toes, sighing heavily before saying, “Your building has a shit front desk,”

There was dead silence from the loudspeaker outside Harry’s apartment, and then, “Oh, hi, Louis,”

“Hi,” Louis readjusted his grip on the leather bag in his hands, “I have your camera,”

“Oh, alright. You’re…early. I thought you’d need it for longer,”

“Yes, well, I’m getting my old one replaced. So,” he bounced harder on his toes and tapped the sides of the bag impatiently.

“That’s…okay, great. Just give me a second?”

“To do _what_?”

“Just give me a second, Louis,” Harry sighed, and then the loudspeaker crackled again. Louis shook his head, looking back at the chicly decorate hallway, filled with white carpet and pale green walls and a few other doors leading to different, smaller apartments. He hoped that those elevator doors at the end of the hallway didn’t pop open to let off one of Harry’s Wall Street trader neighbors; he hadn’t had a chance to wash his hair that day and he was fully aware that his clothes made him look like a fucking drug dealer. It was a miracle he’d even been allowed to go up. But for whatever reason his name was right there on the approved guest list at the front desk, so here he was.

Maybe it would have been better just to climb up again and leave the camera on the balcony.

Finally, the apartment door opened. On the other side, Harry wore just a pair of black and white leggings and some Nike trainers, his hair up in a bun that was rapidly falling apart. His cheeks were flushed and his bare torso was shiny as he dabbed at his skin with the pale pink towel in his hand. He was also smiling. Grinning, more like. Weird.

“Sorry,” he said, “you caught me right after a workout, I was all sweaty,”

“You went back to get a towel and didn’t have the decency to put on a shirt?” Louis scoffed, “Unbelievable,”

Harry shrugged, still smiling, and looped the towel around his shoulders, “Come on in, I just sweat out half my body weight, I need to make lunch anyways,”

“Oh, no, I’m not staying again,” Louis quickly said, holding out the camera bag, “Just…take it, yeah? And then I’ll be out of your hair,”

Harry blinked, and then slowly said, “Louis,”

“Yes, Harry,”

“Louis, you’re in my home,”

“Well, not technically—“

“You are outside my home, in my building. And that means that if I want you to stay, you’re going to stay. If one day you decide to give me your address and I come to yours, you can kick me out anytime you want. But for now, you’ve come to mine again. So my rules,”

“I—“ Louis began, but of course he was cut off.

“Would it help you come in if I told you we can just ignore the last time even happened? Awkwardness and criminal activity and all?”

“You’re not going to take this damn camera unless I come eat with you, are you,”

Harry just shrugged again and Louis rolled his eyes, pushing past him into the apartment, “Twat,”

Harry closed the door behind him and strode down the front hall, into the well-lit kitchen, “Grab yourself a drink. There’s this organic juice shop on the East Side that keeps sending me free samples, trying to get a mention on my show. I could use help drinking everything they gave me,”

Louis glanced between Harry and the hallway they’d just come down, before slowly putting the bag down on the counter and going over to open the fridge. As promised, there was a neat row of colorful bottled juices stacked amongst the full vegetable crispers and organic yogurt cartons. He skimmed over the labels, squinting at the tiny block of white font on each bottle that listed out the ethical values of the company and gave him absolutely no information on what they even tasted like. After a moment he eventually pulled out a dark blue one for himself and a green one for Harry, hoping they turned out to just be blueberry and kale-something.

“Is it just us here?” he asked as he closed the fridge door, “Or am I barging in on your quality personal trainer time?”

Harry shook his head, taking the juice Louis had pulled out for him, “No, no, I was just on the treadmill today. No need for a trainer,”

“Are you still seeing that Italian guy you lusted after forever—“

“Before finding out he was very straight and very married? No. Stopped seeing him after I, uh, kind of asked him out and found out about the straight and married thing,”

“ _Styles_ ,” Louis laughed

“Oh, please—“

“That’s so _precious_ ,”

“You’re a menace,” Harry said flatly, “Can you at least get me a few couple tomatoes, please?”

“Sure,” Louis opened the fridge again and scanned the many levels looking for something round and red, “What are you making, exactly?”

“Well, technically I’m supposed to be doing this paleo diet for a review for work, but…I don’t think anyone has to find out that I made cheese toasties and tomato soup,”

Louis shook his head, finally spotting the tomatoes and pulling out a few, “Only you would make that in summer, you know,”

“Yeah, well,” Harry shrugged, “S’your favorite, innit?”

Well. Technically, that was true. But it had only become his favorite meal after Harry started to make it on Tuesday evenings when they were teenagers. It was the one time they got to be alone during the week, and it was the only meal he knew how to make, so they spent their entire night lying on the apparently priceless carpet in the sitting room while licking tomato soup off plastic spoons and eating blackened crust, always keeping an eye on the windows for the sight of headlights telling them to get back to their rooms as fast as possible.

“Yeah,” Louis agreed after a minute, pulling himself out of his own thoughts long enough to hold out the tomatoes, “Yeah, of course it is,”

“Good,” Harry took them out of his hands and brought the food over the sink, running water over the red skin. Louis’s hands suddenly felt oddly empty, so he grabbed the juice bottle he had left on the countertop and cracked open the lid. He took a sip, only to practically choke on the bitter taste a second later. Harry glanced up, the water still pouring over his hands.

“You alright?”

“Um,” Louis croaked out, holding up the bottle, “I—I don’t think you want to endorse this shit, mate,”

“It can’t be _that_ bad,” he insisted, reaching out to take the open bottle out of Louis’s hands. He lifted to his mouth and winced, immediately setting it down on the counter.

“Okay, okay, yes it can,” he admitted, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

“I fucking _told_ you,”

Harry shook his head and glanced at Louis, still covering his mouth, “I think have bottled water in the very back,”

“Now that’s better,”

*******

“You know, I had _work_ to do today,” Louis sighed. He was lying out on the big, cushioned wicker couch on Harry’s patio, with a tomato-stained pottery bowl balanced on his stomach, his eyes closed against the high afternoon sun. Because it was the middle of the afternoon, far too many hours after he’d left home, and he was still here. Not only that, but he had his beanie, jacket, socks and boots laying in a forgotten black pile near the sliding door, and he was pretty sure there were crumbs still sticking to his beard that he hadn’t bothered to clean yet. He’d made himself _comfortable_. This wasn’t part of the plan.

“Mm,” Harry hummed from one of the nearby chairs. Louis frowned and opened his eyes enough to look over to where Harry was stretched on the chair the was pressed right against the couch Louis had claimed. He was slouched so low that his knuckles brushed the floor of the balcony, and the loose hair at the base of his neck was starting to curl and frizz in the heat. He also had never gotten around to putting a shirt on, but Louis wasn’t going to point that out again.

“I’m serious,” Louis said, reaching out his leg to poke Harry’s knee with a bare toe, “My phone was probably blowing up all day with scorned ex-wives who need me to stalk their cheating husbands. And I wasn’t there to answer them because I was eating _hot soup_ in the _boiling heat_ with _you_ ,”

“It’s Sunday,” Harry replied, yawning around the words, “You’re allowed to have a day off on Sunday,”

“Still. This is the last time,” he readjusted the bowl on his stomach, pushing at the handle of his spoon with his thumb, “But. Thank you,”

“Sure. I’m glad you stayed, actually, I didn’t really have anything to do today,”

“ _Nothing?_ Since when have you ever had nothing to do? When the show started you used to be up until 2 AM trying to schedule interviews and plan everything…”

“Well, the funny thing about hitting it big…is that you can hire people to do things for you,”

Louis kicked his knee softly and snorted, “Brat,”

Harry laughed softly in response, and Louis let his leg drop back down to the ground. Maybe he’d stay a little longer. Maybe that couldn’t hurt.

He was about to close his eyes again when there a bright flash off to the side of his vision. He turned his head enough to look over to the sliding glass door, letting his gaze wander up. He paused when he finally saw a small, black circle positioned right over the door, glistening in the bright sun.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing his soup-covered spoon towards the circle. Harry opened his eyes and barely glanced over his shoulder before he answered.

“Security camera,”

“Is it, uh, running right now?”

“Of course it is. It’s always running, so are all the others,”

“Others?”

“Yeah, there are a few inside, in most of the rooms, the hallway, and then outside the front door, and a couple on the very edge of the balcony, pointing down to the sidewalk,”

“Down…” Louis’ gaze shifted over to the wall of the balcony, at the perfectly arranged blue and white flowers that lined the edges of the space, “Do you…how often do you watch them?”

“Well, I check in a couple times a day, but I have an alert system on that lets me know if there’s anything weird going on,” he said, “I mean…I saw you climbing up the building that one night, if that’s what you really want to know,”

Louis shook his head, “Well, shit, you have anything else guarding this place I should know about? Just in case I ever want to break in again?”

 “Oh, yeah, well, I have the extra locks and emergency panel on the front door, and the same on the bedroom door, and then the safes in the hall closet…”

“Harry,” he cut in, “I—I was kidding,”

“Yeah, but I’m not,”

Louis just stared at him, the glare of the sun and the easiness of the day forgotten with Harry’s statement. After a minute Harry sighed and pulled himself out of his chair, holding out a hand, “Come on, I’ll show you,”

Louis wordlessly lifted his bowl off of his body and set it off to the side, grabbing Harry’s outstretched hand and allowing himself to be pulled off the couch and onto his feet. With their hands still linked, Harry led him back inside, through the living room and past the kitchen, and back into the front hallway. He let go of Louis’s hand and pointed to the edge of the door, right over the doorknob, where there was a neat vertical line of six deadbolt locks. Louis blinked at them, not totally taking them in. He hadn’t noticed them, somehow, before, and they definitely hadn’t been there all the times he had been in the very same apartment years ago. Surely they weren’t…functional? Maybe it was some weird hipster decorating trend? Surely that was it?

“I won’t show you everything, since it’s kind of boring, I guess, but…these are the six manual locks inside, and outside, there’s the keypad, you probably saw that,” Harry started explaining.

Apparently they actually did have a purpose.

“It’s a ten-digit code to get in without being formally buzzed in the door, and even then you have to get approved at the front desk to even get to the elevators. But you knew that part,” he trailed his finger over the locks of the door, “There’s also a steel panel inside the door so it can’t be broken from the outside. The bedroom door has the same thing, only it only has four locks, and no keypad,”

He tilted his head to the side and chuckled at that, “I thought about a keypad for the bedroom, too, actually, but I figured that if anyone ever wanted to stay over that would be a little---not sexy?”

Louis still hadn’t moved his gaze away from the line of locks, or how casually Harry was touching them.

“Harry,”

“Yeah?”

“I just—what the fuck is all of that shit _for_?”

Harry didn’t reply right away, instead he just kept trailing a finger over the back of the door.

“Oh, I don’t know, Louis,” he finally said, his voice tight, “Criminals. Stalkers. My mother. All the great evils of the world,”

He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, finally taking his hand off the door and instead covering his eyes with it. He pressed his back right up against the wall and slid slowly down, until he was sitting against the hallway wall, his long legs pushed against his chest.

“Shit,” he mumbled, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—I’m sorry,”

Louis blinked at him, curled up in the narrow space and staring off at the door. He allowed himself to slid down as well, until he was sitting right across from him, their bare toes practically touching.

“Hey, no, _I’m_ sorry. I should’ve known—“

“No, don’t apologize, it’s fine,” Harry shook his head, “I know I’m overreacting with all of this, I just—it helps, you know?”

Louis nodded, wrapping his arms around his knees. He knew a few things about overreacting. Only his overreaction had looked less like the inside of a locksmith’s shop and more like a row of empty bottles in his kitchen.

“Listen,” he said slowly, “I get it, okay? And if I had my face all over the city and was rich enough to afford all this stuff, I would probably have all of it and more,”

Harry just nodded, running his thumb under one of his eyes.

“Where are you living now?” he finally asked. His voice still sounded thick.

“Hell’s Kitchen,” Louis said, not attempting to challenge the diversion, “Got myself a nice little one-bedroom home office,”

“But isn’t it dangerous out there?”

“This is Manhattan, it’s dangerous anywhere,”

“Yeah, but--I just want to make sure you’re _safe_ ,”

“I’m plenty safe,”

“Really?” he finally looked away from the door to glance at Louis, resting his chin on the top of his folded knees, “How many times have you ripped your own door hinges off, huh?”

“Um—“

“Thought so,” Harry laughed, only it sounded more like a very breath-heavy exhale, “I can always get you some locks put in if you want. Or a security system, maybe. Clearly I know a few people,”

“No, that’s alright, I don’t need anything,”

“Are you sure? I’m not saying you need all of it, but, maybe—something? After everything, don’t you at least want a working door?”

Louis shook his head. Maybe it would be nice, if he could get himself a fortress and feel like all the danger in the world couldn’t touch him. For a little while, he hadn’t even needed the physical protection. There were a few months, years ago, where he’d camped out in this very apartment and thought that all his problems had evaporated on a dark Manhattan street in the middle of the night, with a conveniently timed bus crash. But it wasn’t always that easy.

“My biggest danger is dead,” he finally said, “I just have myself to deal with, and they don’t make locks strong enough to protect me from that, I’m afraid,”

“Right,” Harry sighed, and leaned his head against the wall, hard enough that the contact made a soft _thunk_ sound.

“I miss you, you know,” he said, “I wish you’d come see me more,”

And. Well. Louis missed him, too. Fuck, he really, _really_ missed him, but…it wasn’t fair to drag him into his shit. Harry had worked too hard for the high rise apartment and the solid career, and Louis had worked too hard to stay on two feet and get through what was left of his life. He still hadn’t figured out how they were each going to fit into what the other had made for themselves.

“I—maybe I will, sometime, one day,” Louis offered, “I—I just, I have some stuff I’m trying to figure out,”

“Okay, that’s fair,” Harry said softly, then, slowly, held out a hand, palm up, “Give me your arm,”

“What for?” Louis asked, even though he was already offering over his left hand. Harry didn’t answer, just took his wrist and twisted his arm slightly until the inside was pointing up to the ceiling. With his pointer finger, his touched the ink-covered skin and began tracing a number, followed by another number, and another.

“This is my cell number,” he explained, “You know you can remember it,”

Louis watched his hand move around his arm, finishing out the code and then starting right back where he began, in the same spot, with the same number. He repeated it a few more times, until Louis knew he could repeat it back to himself, play back the feeling of Harry’s finger on his skin with ease.

“Call me sometime,” he said, finally letting go of Louis’s arm, “If you ever get yourself sorted out,”

Louis looked down at his arm as if the digits had left an actual mark. It felt like they should have. It felt like…something.

“Alright,” he heard himself saying, “I’ll do that, Styles,”

*******

The second beginning-end was better. Sort of.

After the accident that may or may not have been his fault, Louis woke up in a hospital bed, in a room that was painted with what was probably supposed to be a comforting shade of green but instead looked like vomit. He had an IV in his arm and swatch of gauze over his nose and there was a woman he had never seen before arguing with a very exhausted-looking nurse carrying a tray of cherry gelatin and ice water.

He fell asleep. When he woke up, the tray of cherry gelatin and ice water was on his bedside table, and someone—a nurse, maybe? He still couldn’t remember—informed him that his entire family was dead. They probably said it a lot nicer, and more drawn out than that. But that was the most important thing.

Aside from the fact that no other relatives were coming to get him.

Instead, three days later, he was led out to a shiny black car idling in front of the hospital. Sitting in the driver’s seat was that woman who had been arguing with his nurse, and in the passenger seat was Manson Maple.

He had a real name, of course. Harry. Harry Styles, which sounded like a fake name, anyways. Pretty much the entire country knew who he was, because he was the titular character on _Maple Manor_ , a badly written teen drama that was somehow extremely popular, mostly because every female in the United Kingdom and Ireland was in apparently in love with Harry. Lottie had even kept a wrinkled, pull-out poster of him from a teen magazine on her bedroom wall for a little while, until she got bored and moved swiftly onto the next famous boy of interest.

More importantly, Harry had briefly left behind his private tutors in London to transfer to Louis’s school, because apparently going to a painfully average public school in a small Northern town made fifteen-year-old starlets look more down to Earth and relatable. It didn’t phase Louis at all. He and Harry were in different years, and he heard disappointed whispers from some of the younger girls that Harry only came to class a few times a week anyways; the rest of his time was spent back in London, filming the show.

That was as close as their two orbits crossed before. And then Louis woke up completely alone in the world, and Harry Styles and his mother were driving him home to live with them.

The two of them fought the whole way to their disgustingly large house, and it was just enough for Louis to pick out what he was doing there in the first place. Good publicity, was what it came down to. Wasn’t it sweet that as soon as Harry had heard about the poor boy from his new school that he lost his family, he had insisted on helping him, going as far to invite him to live with Harry’s family.

Or that’s how the press release would apparently go.

It wasn’t important, in the end, how Louis ended up in the back of that car.

What was important was that they got home, and he got his own bedroom with a closet full of new clothes, and enrollment in a shiny new school in London, and his family was still dead.

And Harry Styles apparently hated him.

That didn’t last long, though.

Sometimes the beginning-ends aren’t as important as they seem.

*******

Usually, Louis had a tradition. At exactly three in the afternoon, after his phone call hours were officially over, he would pull away from his work, get himself a late lunch or a cup of tea, and go open one of the last working windows in his apartment so he could sit on the wide, open ledge. He would eat, and then after letting his stomach settle he would work his way through a few cigarettes, and then grab the sleek pair of silver binoculars he kept in his desk drawer to do his afternoon round of people-watching.

That was _usually_ his tradition, anyways.

Now, he chose to do everything except for the binoculars. Instead, he logged onto the brightly colored webpage of _The Styles Hour_ and clicked the link to play the current live show just as he was getting ready to open his window. 

It wasn’t his fault Harry’s tri-weekly talk show fell at the same his work break did.

“Good afternoon, New York,” Harry’s voice floated through the speakers of Louis’s laptop as he went over to grab his lunch and lift himself onto the windowsill, “Hope you all are enjoying this summer heat. I, for one, was outside all afternoon yesterday. Really, just lovely,”

Louis almost fell off his own windowsill at that.

“We have a fantastic show for you today, as always,” Harry’s voice continued, just as Louis managed to sort himself out and sit down. Honestly, Harry hadn’t even mentioned him, what was he doing?

He listened to Harry list out some of the highlights of the upcoming hour, and then allowed himself to calm down as the first guest came on, some woman who had apparently written the year’s biggest summer romance read. She rambled for long periods of time, but in between her chatter there was Harry’s soft laughter and hums of agreement, and occasionally he would go in for a question or comment.

Louis leaned his head against the frame of the window, kicking the leg that was hanging loosely over the edge, stirring his chopsticks around the sticky, reheated Chinese noodles in his bowl. He didn’t know why this felt wrong. He’d listened to the show before. He’d tuned in for a few minutes to find out where Harry would be that first night he tried to break into his apartment. And he had been there when Harry was still organizing and editing episodes of his independent podcast on his ancient MacBook while he managed to juggle NYU coursework and his media company internship. Back then, his podcast only had a handful of listeners, and Louis had been one of them. He had continued to listen after Harry got picked up by a major radio studio, and his independent podcast became a regular, professionally produced show.

But he hadn’t listened to a full episode in, well, years. He hadn’t gotten to listen as Harry transitioned to doing weekly, and then multi-weekly shows, how he began to interview more significant guests, how he had found his voice, easily asking provoking questions and seamlessly moving through topics and transitions.

He hadn’t gotten to take in how _good_ this little show of his had become.

Louis stayed on the windowsill long after his lunch was eaten and his cigarettes were finished, instead just closing his eyes and listening to the show go on. And then, during the final act—it was Music Monday, and Harry’s choice act of the day turned out to be a thirteen-year-old prodigy covering boy band songs on the violin—he got up from the window, got his phone, and sent a text to the number he’d saved just yesterday.

_Show was good today. That German carrot farmer from Staten Island…riveting stuff._

He immediately locked his phone and turned it upside down so he didn’t have to watch the screen, although he still kept a steady grip on it as he went back to the window and looked back outside.

Of course, a second later the phone started vibrating in his hand, and he flipped it over, frowning at how Harry’s ID filled the screen. The violin music was still drifting through his speakers; the show was still going on.

Still, he picked up the call.

“Um, hello?”

“I knew it,”

He sighed and closed his eyes, “Shut up,”

“I knew you listened to my show,”

“So? A lot of people listen to your show. I hate to break it to you, but most of the East Coast listens to your show,” he leaned his head back against the frame of the window, opening his eyes again, “Speaking of which, aren’t you supposed to be _hosting_ right now?”

“Ah, we wrap up in about six minutes, anyways. She can keep it up for at least three of those, and then I just have to do the send off,”

There was a small rustle on Harry’s end, and then, “What are you doing right now?”

“Working,” Louis murmured, “Or at least I was,”

“Who are you stalking today?”

“That’s confidential,” he replied, shrugging even though Harry couldn’t see him, “NDA’s and all that,”

“I see,” Harry laughed, and then his tone evened out when he said, “You texted…really soon,”

Louis’s stomach churned a little, and he stopped kicking the foot that was swinging easily out of the window, “Is that bad?”

“No, no, of course it’s not,” Harry cut in, “I’m just really happy I’m talking to you again. It’s…it’s kind of weird, after so long, you know?”

“Right,” Louis said. He kicked his foot out further, “I get it,”

“Listen, I—“ There was a small murmur of static on the other end, and then, “Are you stalking anyone on Friday night?”

Even though his calendar was on the other side of the room, Louis knew it was completely blank. He remembered because he had barely ever had a free Friday night in the last year. Fridays were popular times for bad behavior.

“Surprisingly, no,”

“Well, here’s the thing…I was supposed to go out to dinner with one of my press donors, but of course he’s in fucking Maui and didn’t bother to tell me, and I can’t get rid of my table…”

Oh. Okay. Louis could see where this was going.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“I mean, yeah. But only if you want to,” Harry said, “It’s a nice place, Louis, really nice, I promise. Seafood, I think,”

“I’d…that sounds good, actually,”

“Great,” the violin music coming out of the speakers began to waver just as Harry took a small breath on the other end, “Oh, shit, I think she’s wrapping up, I need to go back in. But…Friday?”

“Yeah, okay. Friday,”

“Great, great. I’ll…I’ll text you later, maybe? Okay, shit, sorry, I really have to go. Bye,”

The line crackled, and Louis blinked, pulling the phone away from his ear and cradling it in his hand.

“Well, everyone, that was April Young. You can buy her EP on iTunes now,” Harry’s voice was still there, only now it was playing back on the speakers of his laptop, “As usual, I’d like to thank all of my guests, all of our sponsors, all of the lovely people who come in and work here day after day…oh, I can see my producer in the other room right now, she looks like she wants to yell at me for something. Sorry, love, you’re going to have a wait a moment…”

Louis breathed deeply, ungripping his phone enough to let it drop to his side, back to the floor of his apartment as he looked back out the window.

Same lattice of sidewalks, same trees, same stillness. A voice he had tried to forget in the background.

Friday. He could figure out what to do with himself until then.

*******

Friday arrived, and Louis realized he didn’t own a suit.

It was something that probably should’ve occurred to him earlier; it just wasn’t until Harry texted him while he was having breakfast with the address of the restaurant and a quick _See you soon_ _J_ _x_ that Louis actually bothered to plug the address into Google and look at the kind of place he’d be going to. Of course, it was _nice_. Like, the middle of Upper East Side-takes several months to book a reservation-serves $50 appetizers-sort of nice. Which made him immediately get up, go into his bedroom, stand in front of his open closet, and panic slightly.

He had owned a whole row of button-downs and ties when he had started teaching, but they’d been thrown away years ago. Now, all he owned were things appropriate to wear while climbing buildings and hiding in bushes, not going _out_ anywhere.

_Damn it._

He rifled through the minimal wardrobe he had again, the mismatched hangers banging against each other as he shifted through them, before he finally separated out a dark blue plaid shirt from the pack. It was dark enough that it looked black from a distance, and, well, it had buttons, at least. The only real issue was that it was covered in tiny wrinkles, with a massive fold right in the middle of it. And he also didn’t own an iron.

He pulled the shirt and its hanger out of the closet anyways and took it into the bathroom, leaving it hanging on the back of the door while he turned the shower dial all the way to HOT, and hoped the steam would do something to it.

The water ran for a few hours, as Louis attempted to get some work done. He did some background research on one of his new missing persons’ cases, downloaded some of the pictures he had collected throughout the week onto a series of neatly marked USB drives, and made himself several extremely strong cups of tea while he took a phone call with an irate client who was certain Louis had made a mistake when the files he had turned over with dirt on the client’s biggest political rival included pictures of said rival having a cozy dinner with the client’s wife.

It really wasn’t his fault when people didn’t like what they had paid him to find.

After he got off the phone and drained the last of his tea, Louis finally crossed the room and opened the door of the bathroom, squinting against the steam that blew into his face. He immediately began to inspect the shirt that was left on the door, which still looked decently rumpled.

                                                                                        

“Fuck,” he mumbled, “Fuck, fuck, fu—“

“What the hell is that?”

Louis looked over his shoulder and sighed, “Niall, what are you doing here?”

“You woke me up,” his neighbor mumbled, rubbing at his eye.

“Well, I’m fucking sorry,” he snapped, pulling on the hem of the shirt. There was still that massive wrinkle right in the middle of it, so bad that even the dark color wasn’t camouflaging it. He didn’t need this. Especially not when he already had a headache from that damn phone call.

“God, _fuck me_ ,”

“What’re you doing, anyways?” Niall asked. He was vaguely aware that Niall’s voice was coming from further into the apartment, towards the kitchen. He couldn’t work up the ability to care.

“I’m going out tonight,” he answered, pressing the flat of his palm into the wrinkle, “Somewhere nice. Upper East Side,”

“Why the fuck are you going there?”

“To meet a friend,”

“You have friends?”

“Yes, I have friends, Niall, Jesus,” he groaned and leaned his head against the back of the door, “God, this is pointless,”

“What is, exactly?” Louis turned enough to see that Niall was standing right next to him, holding a small wheel of bright orange cheese that now sported several bite marks around the edge. He motioned towards the shirt with the cheese, “S’what you’re wearing?”

“Well, yeah…”

“That’s the saddest shirt I’ve ever seen, Lou,”

“ _I know_ ,”

“You know, I might have something you can wear,” Niall said, tilting his head, “You can borrow it, if you want,”

Louis cut his gaze to his neighbor again and shook his head, “No offense, but I don’t really feel like taking fashion advice from someone who’s wearing a swimsuit as pants,”

“It’s your loss, then,” Niall said as Louis turned his gaze back to the shirt on the hanger. It was starting to look worse, if anything, wilted and wet. He finally admitted defeat and went over to turn off his showerhead. He was wasting his hot water, anyways.

He started taking the hanger down, fiddling the damp hem, his mind reeling on what he could do. Maybe he could just wear it with his jacket—leather was sometimes timeless or some shit, wasn’t it?—and no one would notice. Oh, who the fuck was he kidding. People would notice. Harry would notice. He probably wouldn’t care, granted, but—oh, God, what if people Harry knew saw them? What if they thought Louis was a _fucking rent boy_ because he couldn’t afford a decent suit?

Although. Wait. Maybe he could afford it…

“Niall, my love,” Louis said, still gripping his waste of a shirt, “What day is it?”

“Um, the third?”

“It is, isn’t it,”

Of course. It was the first Monday of the month. Zayn was supposed to pay him today, and he’d almost forgotten. The universe was sparing him, after all.

“Right, then,” he announced, moving out of the room to go grab his keys, “It’s time for me to go shopping.”

“Can you buy some crackers while you’re gone?” Niall called after him as Louis shoved his feet into his boots and tucked his keys and phone in one pocket, “You’re out and I want some,”

“Of course, Niall,” he sighed as he pushed open his broken-at-the-hinges door, “Whatever you want,”

*******

“Zayn,”

Louis leaned against the office door, knocking softly with the back of his hand. There was no response from inside the office, so he tried again, “Hey. It’s me. Am I allowed to come in or…?”

Still, there was nothing, and he glanced over his shoulder to the empty hallway behind him, with no one around to help him out. The secretary at the front desk—not Tina, thank God—hadn’t mentioned Zayn being in a meeting and had told him to go ahead in, but, after last time, he figured he owed him so fair warning before barging in.

Then again, he wasn’t answering and Louis needed to get his check.

“Alright, Malik, I tried, but…I’m coming in,”

A second after cracking the door open, he realized his mistake. Because Seal was blasting through the air of the office. Fucking _Seal_. And it was loud enough that the whole floor of the building could probably hear it.

What the actual fuck.

He shut the door quickly behind him and pressed his back to the door, glancing around the office. Everything was in its usual place; the only odd thing was Zayn, sitting slouched half-way down his chair with his eyes closed, and the music that was blasting out of his desk speakers.

“Ahem,” Louis said, loudly enough that Zayn jumped and opened his eyes.

“Louis,” he gasped, quickly sitting up and grabbing his abandoned mouse to turn off the music, “What are you doing here?”

“Uh, I just wanted to get my check,” he replied, “I went by the front desk and they said that you had everything for me in here,”

“What? Oh, of course, you’re getting paid today, aren’t you?”

“Well, yeah,” he glanced at the still-open Spotify page on Zayn’s computer, “Uh, do you have that ready now, or…?”

“No, of course I have it, it’s right here,” Zayn said distractedly, picking up an envelope from the corner of his desk and holding it out, “I ordered you a new camera, by the way. Hopefully it’ll be delivered to your place in a few days,”

“Great, great,” Louis crossed the short distance between him and Zayn and took the envelope out of his hand, “Is, uh, everything okay with you?”

“Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Well, for starters, you’re playing your Sad Jams playlist,” Louis said, “Which, by the way, you haven’t updated since university,”

“What? Oh, God…” he clicked again, and the screen minimized, leaving just his desktop wallpaper that sported the logo of the firm. He stayed like that for a minute, hand still tightly gripping the mouse, when he sighed, “So I think Liam might be bi,”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Malik,”

“No, no, I really think he is,” he rushed on, “Because, well, this morning I asked him if he had plans for the weekend, you know, just—normal conversation and all,”

“Uh-huh,” Louis turned the enveloped over in his hands. The sight of his first name written in cursive across the front was suddenly the most interesting thing in the world.

“Well, he said he’s going to a speed dating event on Saturday—“

“He told you this?”

“Yes, Louis, just listen to me—anyways, I wished him luck—I mean, still, fairly normal conversation,”

“Fairly,”

“And then he said he was hoping it was okay, because he had been to the venue and hadn’t liked it,” he slapped his hands onto the desk and leaned across the surface, his dark green tie dragging on the gleaming wood, “Louis, you will never guess where the venue is,”

“Oh, then I shouldn’t even try,”

“Stockholm, Louis. _Stockholm_ ,”

“As in, the gay bar in Chelsea? The one with the really shitty signature cocktails?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Zayn breathed.

“Zayn,” Louis said slowly, “I hope you realize that people usually do not tell their bosses that they’re spending their weekends at gay speed dating events. Especially not someone who cares about their career as much as Liam,”

Zayn blinked at him with no registration in his eyes, and Louis sighed.

“He’s flirting with you, you absolute dumbass,” he said. Zayn’s eyes went wide, “Congratulations, your wildest fantasies have come true,”

“Wait. No. No no no no,” Zayn leaned back in his chair, covering his face with his hands, “Oh my God, this is bad,”

“Am I missing something here?”

“I--“Louis, I’m his boss. I mean, it’s one thing have a fantasy, but…I’m going to promote him at the end of the month. I can’t do that if he thinks the only reason I did that is because I want to sleep with him. Actually, that’s what everyone is going to think if I do that,”

“Ah,” Louis nodded, “I see,”

Zayn nodded, although his eyes looked far away.

“I mean, you probably should’ve seen this coming…”

“ _Not now_ ,”

“Sorry. I just--look, he clearly likes you, alright?” Louis said, “And he’s a smart guy. Just sit down, talk to him about it, maybe,”

“But what if he’s just flirting with me to get a promotion? What if he’s actually straight? Wait, does that mean he thinks I won’t promote him? Am I too harsh?”

“You’re exhausting, is what you are,” Louis said, “Just talk to him. Save yourself some time,”

“Okay, maybe I will,” Zayn replied, in a tone that in no way implied he was planning on speaking to Liam anytime soon. He straightened back up, smoothing down his tie and his dark gray blazer, coughing softly before returning to his usual professional tone, “Uh, can I help you with anything else, by the way? Besides the check?” 

Louis tilted his head, following Zayn’s movements as he re-straightened his tie and folded down the cuffs on his jacket.

“Actually, yeah,” he said, “Do you know where I can buy a suit?”

*******

Harry’s restaurant choice of the night, The Reef, ended up meeting just about every expectation Louis had after looking it up online. When his cab pulled up to the front of the restaurant, the neon-enhanced sign glared down at him, making him squint as he quickly handed over some cash to the driver and climbed out. The name of the establishment hung right over the gold-paneled double doors, and the letters of the name were each shaped like a differently colored piece of coral. He breathed out a sigh of relief as he approached the door. He could roll his eyes, but, honestly, it looked harmless, more trendy than anything, and above all else, _new_. Nowhere that could trigger memories of dinners he barely even remembered and didn’t care to.

Inside, The Reef was crowded enough that Louis stayed pressed against the glass double doors for a solid ten minutes before he could move up into the actual lobby, which was fine with him. He had a few emails to answer, anyways.

He was about half-way through telling off one of his newer clients for heckling him for information he hadn’t even researched yet, when he was interrupted by the most cheerful female voice he’d ever heard.

“Hello!”

He glanced up from his phone— _reread the goddamn client’s agreement if you want to disagree with me on terms I wrote_ still half-way typed out on his screen—and blinked blankly at the hostess in front of him, with her neat blonde bun and wide, bright-pink lined smile.

“Um,” he locked his phone and tucked it into his jacket pocket, “Hi,”

“Welcome to The Reef,” she chirped, “Can I have a reservation name?”

Panic and relief flashed through him quickly, one after the other. On one hand, she wasn’t glaring at him, which meant he probably at least looked like he could afford to be in this place on his own, but on the other hand…he definitely hadn’t booked the table.

“Oh,” Louis mumbled, immediately looking over his shoulder, “I don’t—I’m meeting someone—“

They could wait, right? That wasn’t a big deal. It shouldn’t have to be.

“Uh,” he said again, turning back to the front and pulling out his phone, “Let me—“

“Louis!”

He paused, his thumb still hovering the phone screen, and turned around in time to see Harry, half-way through the front door, one hand still on the glass, wearing some tissue-thin shirt he hadn’t even bothered to button all the way.

Louis had never been so fucking thrilled to see him.

Harry slipped past the line that was forming in the lobby, mumbling apologies, and then immediately pulled Louis into for a hug when he reached the front of the line, “Hi,”

“Hey,” Louis breathed out, despite being slightly crushed by Harry’s sudden grip.

“Sorry I’m late, things are always crazy on Fridays,” he apologized, letting up slightly but keeping a hand on each of Louis’s arms.

“It’s okay,” he said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder, “Uh, do you want to—“

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Harry immediately let him go and turned towards the hostess, “Sorry, Crystal,”

“Oh, it’s no trouble, Mr. Styles,” she said, “I assume you have the usual booth?”

“Yes, I do,”

“Wonderful,” she tapped twice on her tablet as she spoke, “Would you like red or white on the table to start?”

“Neither, if that’s alright,”

“Of course,” there were two more taps, and then she looked up with another neat smile, “Sebastian can take you to your table now,”

“Thank you,” Harry glanced back briefly at Louis before following after the waiter that was standing closely behind the hostess desk. The server led them past the open bar and through several rows of tables before finally reaching a large booth tucked into the back corner of the restaurant. The table was empty except for an elaborate centerpiece made of coral and seashells and two empty wineglasses that would apparently go unused.

“You could’ve ordered wine if you wanted to,” Louis said as he moved to sit down.

“It’s no problem. You don’t drink, and I can survive without it,” Harry shrugged, pulling off his jacket and offering it to the hovering waiter, who immediately departed as soon as he had it in his hands, “You look nice, by the way,”  

“Oh, thanks,” Louis murmured, absently scratching at the back of his neck. He’d definitely neglected to cut off some of the tags off, “It’s…it’s a little new,”

“I like the shirt,” Harry continued, now moving to sit down on the other side of the booth, “It’s nice to see you in something other than black,”

Louis tugged at the stiff collar of his shirt. He’d wanted to go with something that was plain white, but the saleswoman had pushed him into going for a rather bright blue, to match his eyes, apparently.

“The rest of the suit’s still black, you twat,” he mumbled, just as the same waiter came back to set a pitcher of ice water and a pair of menus on the table. Louis quickly picked his up and opened it, scanning the list of entrees on the calligraphy-stamped pages, “And what the hell are they doing to these lobsters to justify this much for them?”

“I’ll pay for it, don’t worry,” Harry said, like it was obvious, as he opened his own, “And don’t you dare get whatever’s cheapest. Honestly, get whatever you want,”

“Well, in that case, I have the sudden craving for the caviar-infused oysters,” Louis announced, flicking back to the front of his menu, “I can’t believe that’s a real appetizer option, really. I mean, middle of the Upper East Side and that’s your specialty item? Could you get anymore cliché?”

Harry shook his head, then set his menu down, folding his hands on top of it, “So, how was your day today?”

Louis’s grip tightened a little more on his menu, and he eventually looked up to meet Harry’s curious eyes.

“It was, uh, a bit weird, to be honest,” he admitted, “Do you remember Zayn Malik, by any chance?”

“That closeted kid you roomed with at NYU?” Harry asked, “Yeah, I think I remember him. He has that big law firm uptown now, right?”

“Yeah, he does. I actually kind of work for him now. At least, he sends a lot of clients my way,” Louis’s mouth twitched as he spoke, Harry still watching him, “Anyways, he has this weird crush on his assistant…”

He launched into the full story of Zayn and Liam, from the day Louis had walked into the office a month after being hired to find Zayn taking entirely too long to dictate his coffee order to the new assistant, up until his most recent breakdown.

“Wait, wait, back up,” Harry giggled—because of course he was fucking _giggling_ , “He was playing Seal?”

“Oh yes, he was,” Louis agreed, nodding and picking up another oyster off one of the appetizer trays in front of him.

“Like, _Kiss From A Rose_?”

“Yeah, yeah, exactly that,”

“Why that?”

“He…oh, God, he used to listen to the same thing every time he got dumped in uni, which was a lot, actually. I never had the heart to tell him his headphones always leaked until the end of our last year,”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Harry gave one last snort, then reached for his water, “I think you have me beat for how weird your day was,”

“Why, what happened to you?”

“Oh, I got an aura reading done today,”

“I’m sorry?”

“An aura reading? Like, we had this woman on the show today who wrote this book on the afterlife and stuff, and she offered to do a reading on my spiritual energy after our interview was over,”

“What did she say?”

“That I have a kind heart and that at times I’m overly cautious. Oh, and that I’m going to live a long life,”

“Sounds like the shit they say to everyone,”

“I mean, it’s better than her telling me I’m an arsehole who’s going to die in two years,”

“Nah,” Louis grabbed his water glass and lifted it to his mouth, “That would be me, darling,”

Harry snorted softly, just as their server floated back over to take orders for entrees. After he left Harry started talking about some soul cycle class he was looking into taking soon, and while he was clearly rambling and looking for something to fill the space, Louis was thankful for it. He put in random tidbits where he could, and they discussed nothing and everything as their server slipped past their table to put down extra trays of crab cakes and oysters alongside their entrees of seafood formed into different shapes over piles of rice and vegetables. After it was all there, they spent a decent amount of time rotating every plate around, scooping up bits of everything.

It was only after the plates were looking rather barren and Harry requested a fresh pitcher of water and a dessert menu that he leaned over the table, resting his elbow on the table and cradling his cheek in his hand.

“I’m really happy you could come,” he said.

“Yeah, me too,” Louis stabbed his last piece of shrimp with his fork and lifted it up, twirling it around to admire it, “This place is pretty kitschy, but the shrimp’s not bad,”

“It’s not that kitschy,”

“The entire back wall is a saltwater aquarium,”

“Okay, it’s a little kitschy,” Harry admitted, “Sorry about that,”

“S’alright. I actually like it,” Louis said, “It’s nice to go to a decent restaurant and be able to order for yourself for once,”

He finally tucked the shrimp into his mouth and looked over at Harry, but stopped chewing completely when he saw him. Harry was looking down at his lap, his face tense as he chewed on his lip. Eventually, he looked up at Louis and shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” he got out, “I just…when you talk about him…”

Louis resumed chewing and swallowed, even though his throat suddenly felt unbearably tight.

“Oh, uh, right. Kills the mood a little, I suppose,”

“Louis…” Harry said, then paused before asking, “Are you mad at me? For what happened, I mean,”

“Why the hell would I be mad at you?”

“I don’t know. You were my best friend, you were the reason I came here in the first place, you—fuck, Louis, you used to be the one who faced down my mum when I couldn’t. I should’ve—I should’ve seen some red flags when you started seeing him, you know? But I was so busy, I was in my last year of school, I had that internship—“

Louis sighed, locked his fingers together. He didn’t want to have this conversation here. He didn’t want to have it ever, if he was being honest with himself. But right here, in the middle of a bright, sparkling restaurant, surrounded by people a lot richer than he was, he was going to have this conversation.

“Stop,” he snapped, and then took a breath and forced his voice to soften, “Just, stop, okay?”

Harry’s mouth was still open, like he was still planning on saying something, but his lips promptly closed at Louis’s words. Louis took a breath, balancing his elbows on the table, and rubbed his forehead with both hands before looking back up.

“I am not mad at you. Do you know why?” he said. He tried to keep his voice level and soft, so as not to attract too much attention, but he still kept glancing around, seeing if anyone was eavesdropping, “Because what happened was not anybody’s fault but that— _prick_ , alright? It wasn’t mine, or yours, not anyone’s but his. No matter what, he would’ve done whatever he wanted, to either of us, to get what he wanted, and what he wanted was me,”

He didn’t get any response from that, instead Harry kept looking down at his hands, intently focused on sliding one ring on and then off his right thumb.

“Harry,” Louis said carefully, “I need you to tell me something,”

He stopped, slipping the ring back on one last time and then looking up, “Okay,”

“Did you take me here because you felt guilty? Or was it something else?” he asked, “Because I’m honestly still trying to figure out how I went from almost robbing you to us going on a date in, like, two weeks,”

“We’re not on a date,”

“Yeah, well, I’m still not paying,” he closed his eyes, his voice sounding painfully flat even when he was trying to be funny, “Tell me why I’m here, Harry, please,”

“I guess…” he began and then looked over his shoulder, probably doing his own check for eavesdroppers, and then turned down, “I guess,” he said again, “You’ve needed a lot of space over the last couple years, I get that. But…you came back. Just climbed up the side of my building, after almost two years, and…”

He ducked his head and shook it, little pieces of his hair breaking free from where they were tucked behind his ear to instead fall over his face.

“God, Louis, I’ve missed you, you know that? And maybe it’s selfish, but I don’t even want to think about you going away again. But at the same time, I’m not totally sure how to make you stay,”

Louis felt his chest tighten. What was he supposed to say to that? He had missed Harry too, maybe a lot more than he had allowed himself to admit. But that didn’t change the fact that he _had_ gone away, and twice at that. Once, when he’d stopped answering Harry’s calls because someone else had told him too. And then again, two years later, when he had climbed onto Harry’s balcony with mud caking the soles of his brand-new Italian shoes and blood and dirt splashed on the collar of his pressed French collar, and then walked out six months later with no explanation.

 “I’m sorry I left,” he managed, “Both times. But the second time especially,”

“That’s not what I need to hear right now,”

“What do you need, then?”

Before he could process it, Harry’s arm shot across the table, and then he grabbed onto the hand Louis had left resting on the tabletop. He knit their fingers together tightly, until the angles of his rings were digging into the spaces between Louis’s fingers. He licked his lips, and he pumped Louis’s hand as he spoke.

“I need you to promise me you won’t go again,”

“I—“ Louis looked down at their interlocked hands, and forced himself to focus on that and not on Harry’s face, “I don’t know if I can promise you that,” he said softly.

He hated himself for saying it. He wanted to be able to confident promise Harry _something_. But at the same time, he knew that he wasn’t exactly stable. He couldn’t guarantee that he could get his shit together or get a real career that would pay for him to get out of a risky line of work in Hell’s Kitchen. He couldn’t guarantee that if he woke up one morning with the urge to get the fuck out of New York, he wouldn’t get up and board the first flight to wherever he could afford to go. He didn’t have anything tying him here tightly enough to do that.

Harry pumped his hand again, and this time he actually looked up, feeling his throat clench up when he saw how wet his eyes had become.

“Just don’t fly away from me,” Harry whispered, like it was a secret, like it was something precious, “Not completely. Not again,”

Well. Maybe there was something tying Louis here. Harry. Maybe he could keep him here.

“I can’t fly, Styles,” he said eventually, “I can jump, very, very high, but that’s about it,”

Another tight squeeze.

“You know what I mean,”

“Okay. But—you need to listen to me right now,” Louis said. He was pushing through the clutter of Harry’s hand in his, the desperate, pleading look in his eyes, the clean and yet perfumed air that hung over the restaurant, “I can’t promise you anything, alright? Because I’m fucked up. I mean, not as bad as I once was, but…God, Harry, you didn’t want to see me when I was my worst. Trust me on that. Do not ever blame yourself for not being there,”

He took a breath, rubbing his thumb into the edge of Harry’s wrist, “Styles, please do not cry in this extremely overpriced hipster restaurant, if you do that I’m going to kill you,”

Harry blinked quickly, which barely did anything to make his eyes clearer, “I’m sorry,”

“No, no, it’s fine. Just—listen,”

He lifted their locked hands up to his mouth, not close enough to kiss his fingers but instead just to nose at Harry’s ring-laden knuckles, the sharp edges scratching his skin.

“I’m still not making you any promises,” he repeated as he did. He kept his eyes flicked up, enough to meet Harry’s gaze, enough to ensure that he was listening, “But I will say that for you, I’m willing to try to keep both feet on the ground,”

*******

Louis arrived home to find a letter taped to the cardboard that was covering the broken panel in his door. It was a rather pissed-off note from one of someone living upstairs, complaining about noise coming from his apartment recently and threatening to inform the landlord and get him evicted. Well, they could certainly do their best, but he doubted it would do any good after all the times his landlord had hired him to stalk various problematic tenants over the last year.

He took the letter inside and promptly tossed it to the side of the front hallway, along with his jacket and shoes. He had every intention to go straight to bed and get an early morning so he could prepare for the slew of work he had lined up for the weekend, but instead he found himself sitting on the floor in the middle of the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee and picking at the tiramisu Harry had insisted on getting for him in a take-out box. 

Despite how great the night had been, he couldn’t shake the tightness in his shoulders, the thickness in his throat, the feeling that he wasn’t safe, like the brief happiness he had inside The Reef and on the cab ride home was all-too temporary.

Louis pushed his body further into the refrigerator behind him, taking in the slight rumbling that pulsed against his back, the same way he reveled in the heat of his coffee and the teeth-aching sweetness of the dessert.

“Charles, Willow Grove, Shade,” he murmured, stabbing at the pastry left in the box with his fork, “Charles, Willow Grove, Shade,”

He didn’t go to bed. He watched the sun come up, got up, put the cardboard box in the trash and sticky fork and empty coffee mug in the sink with all his other dirty dishes, and then went into the bathroom to strip off his now-wrinkled suit and take a long shower with the last shred of his hot water.

He didn’t think about eventually, he was going to crash.

 

*******

The next few weeks marched on, the city quickly diving straight into summer. The streets simmered with heat, the tourists swarmed onto the sidewalks and the uptown shops and restaurants, and clients were coming in at a steady enough stream that Louis had little else to focus on except work and keeping himself confined to the small patch of cool air his several rotating fans had created inside his apartment.

But he couldn’t find his focus, not as easily as before. He found himself opening his windows more, leaning out long enough to smoke or to pick up his binoculars, more out of habit than anything. In the middle of the night he would get up, go to the front door to check if it was locked, and then to each window and make sure there was nothing lurking on the other side. Checking, always checking.

It was probably the heat that was getting to him. He hated the heat. The heat reminded him of waking up with his cheek in a puddle of vodka in a bar he couldn’t remember coming to. A beach on some private tropical island while a frozen drink melted in his hands and he battled between the voice in his head that told him he never wanted to leave and the one that told him to run into the sea until his feet couldn’t touch anymore, until his head was enveloped by the lapping waves. The back alley of an old industrial building as a bus screamed around the corner…

Just…the heat. God, the heat.

And then, in the midst of everything, there was Harry to account there.

Here was the thing.

Louis wasn’t used to having friends anymore.

It wasn’t as much of a sad, self-pitying statement as it was just another fact of his reality.  Four years ago, he had work friends, a few select neighbors from his building he didn’t mind talking to, students from NYU who had stayed in the city and kept in touch with him. He barely remembered any of them now, and God knows they didn’t remember him. Now he had Zayn, although even on their best days they were still co-workers more than anything else. There was Niall, but in all honestly it was a rather one-sided relationship when Louis was the one who constantly had to check that he was eating and could get into his own apartment.

He had become accustomed to being on his own, and he was fine with it. It was easier that way, really.

But now Harry was back, and Louis was slowly growing used to having his work hours broken up with short messages. They were usually attached with pictures Harry had taken during breaks at work, along with small observations or a few dozen questions that mostly boiled down to checking if Louis was doing okay. From there were several offers to meet somewhere for coffee or lunch. The offers were always attached with food, like he was scared Louis wouldn’t accept otherwise.

Louis answered the texts and did his to go to as many lunches as he could. At the very least they’d gotten enough off the table that Harry knew Louis wasn’t avoiding him, or angry with him, or anything else.

Of course, Louis had yet to tell Harry anything about what had happened to him in the last year and a half, but that was for another day. A day very, very far into the future.

Definitely not while he was sitting on a picnic table outside a hipster coffee shop uptown, drinking a bowl of black coffee while Harry sat across from him, working on his laptop. It was nice, almost, not to have to talk, to just get in his caffeine for the day while Harry went over emails and listened to clips for the additional half-hour podcast he put out on Saturday afternoons. Like they could just exist for a while.

Especially when Harry brought goodies for him, like the preview of the August issue of _Vanity Fair,_ which featured a Central Park photo shoot Harry had done a few months prior. It was apparently themed around seventies fashion pulled out the final circle of hell where it belonged, and Louis, for one, was enjoying every second of it.

“Hey,” Harry said from across the table, “So, um, I had a thought,”

“Yeah?” Louis lifted his gaze from the third picture in the shoot, which featured a cow-print tuxedo and a red velvet couch. Fashion, honestly, “Alright, go ahead,”

“Okay, first of all, put that thing down,” Harry scolded, batting his hand towards the magazine. Louis quickly lifted it away from his grasp.

“Um, _excuse you_ , I am trying to read about the right jeans for my body type in peace,”

“You’re looking at spread,”

“Well, in my defense, you bathing shirtless in the middle of a public foundation is very distracting,” he flipped the page and turned it towards him, “What kind of print are those pants? Acid hallucination?”

“ _Stop_ ,” Harry laughed. He feebly batted for the magazine again, and Louis finally conceded and set it down.

“Sorry. You had a thought,”

“Well, yeah,” Harry shrugged, “Just—I’m free on Sundays, usually,”

“Today’s not Sunday,”

“Yeah, I know. Which is why I’m still working. But Sunday…I’m free, no work,”

“Okay…”

“So, I’m home on those days. Unless I have some charity thing or something,”

“ _Okay_ …”

Harry sighed, pulling out his earbud and wrapping it around two of his fingers, “You can come over then, is what I’m saying. I mean, you can come over any time, really, but…I’ll be there to answer the door on Sundays,”

“That’s your thought,”

“Uh-huh,” Harry worried his lip, focusing on the wrapped earbuds that encircled his fingers, “I mean, I just…if you ever need me, or want to hang out for a bit—I just thought you’d like to know,”

“Are you sure?” Louis asked, “I wouldn’t be interrupting anything?”

“No. I moved my personal trainer days to Mondays and Fridays after work, so nothing there. And I can schedule meetings or work things any time,” he shrugged, “And I’ll do my best not to invite over any, ah, _gentleman callers_ then, either, when you’re there,”

Louis rolled his eyes, “You are _ridiculous_ ,”

“I just thought I would put it out there!” Harry insisted, holding up both hands, “I mean, it’s probably not a real concern, but, still…”

“ _Okay_ ,” Louis relented, “I promise I will do my best to keep your lonely, undateable arse company on Sundays,”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Louis sighed, “I’ll try,”

Harry grinned widely, and Louis ducked his head and picked up his magazine again.

He tried to ignore that he seemed to be making a lot of promises lately.

“Just go back to your podcast, Styles,” he mumbled, “I’m trying to figure out where they thought having you make out with a pomegranate was a good idea,”

*******

Louis went to Harry’s apartment the following Sunday. And the week after that. And made plans for the following week.

Harry was happy, Louis was happy that he was happy.

The June heat rushed on.

*******

Louis hated his job sometimes.

Most of the time, it was manageable, which was all he could really ask for. But when his morning was interrupted by a phone call by a client who had decided, a half hour before their scheduled meeting, that he no longer had any interest in going to a place like Hell’s Kitchen, he really started to regret starting his business in the first place.

The only upside was that the Malik & Edwards office had a working air-conditioner. 

When Louis got off the elevator and went down the hallway of the firm, one of the receptionists at the front desk looked up and smiled, even giving a brief wave. Louis sighed and returned the wave.

“Hey, love,” he said when he got to the desk, already digging through his bag for the binder he had complied that morning with printed information and pictures, “I called earlier, I’m just dropping off the evidence from the Hanning case,”

“Oh, of course,” she replied, “Will he be by later to pick it up?”

“Hopefully,” he sighed. He set the thick binder down on the desk, patting it once on top, “Just be careful with it in the meantime,”

“Of course, Mr. Tomlinson,”

He gave her one last smile, ready to head straight back down the elevator, grab an overpriced bottle of water from the snack bar on one of the lower floors and then move on with his day, when a voice called out from behind him.

“Louis,”

He paused, gripping the strap of his bag, and slowly turned in time to see blonde hair and a designer skirt suit striding towards him.

“Perrie, hi,” he managed to get out right before she was in front of him. Wordlessly, she tilted her head and tapped the side of his sunglasses before neatly crossing her arms against her chest.

“Take those things off, Jesus Christ, you’re inside,”

He quickly slid the glasses off his eyes and folded them, tucking them into his shirt, and huffed, “I assume you’re doing alright?”

“I’m splendid,” she replied, “Now, is there a reason you haven’t seen my wife in nearly six months?”

Oh. _Oh._

Right. Well. In his defense, it wasn’t really his fault that a year ago Zayn had really wanted him to get his shit together and had handed him the card of a psychiatrist who also happened to his business partner’s wife.

Okay, so maybe it was kind of Louis’s fault for actually going. And then stopping without warning several months later.

“Ah,” he said, “I didn’t want to?”

Perrie raised an eyebrow.

“That sounded bad. I wanted, to, really, Leigh Anne is lovely. I—I couldn’t? I couldn’t. You know…work,”

“I’m not even going to pretend I believe that,” she said, “Look, she actually knows what she’s doing. She’s thinking about going back to school to get a specialized degree for treating people with powers,”

“Say that a little louder, why don’t you,” he mumbled, glancing over his shoulder, before turning back to look at her, “Look, I’m doing fine,”

“Are you, though?”

 Louis once again looked over his shoulder, and then to his side. The reception desk was plugged into their computers and phone calls, and the few people that would still wandering the hallway seemed far more interested in their phones than Louis and Perrie’s conversation.

Still.

“I just don’t want to go back, Pez, c’mon,”

“And I can’t make you,” she replied, “You like to do things by yourself. I can understand that. But…I don’t want to see you burn out again,” 

“I’m not going to do that,” he said a little too quickly, “I’m not, okay? I’m better now. I’m being good. I have AA chips and everything,”

“Okay,” Perrie closed her eyes, “I just…just know that if you ever want to come back, she’d love to see you,”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Louis glanced over his shoulder one last time, “Now, I really need to—“

He had barely started to turn around before he saw Liam barreling down the hall, balancing a tray of Starbucks cups in both hands. Of course, instead of passing by, he caught Louis’s gaze and broke into his usual wide smile, making a beeline towards the front desk.

“Oh, hi, M—“

“Louis,” he cut in weakly before Liam could continue, “Please, you—call me Louis,”

“I’ll try to remember. Should I let Mr. Malik know you’re here?”

“Oh, no, I’m just heading out, actually,”

“Alright, then,” he readjusted the cardboard tray in his hands enough to pull out one of the tall white cups, holding it towards Perrie, “I, ah, have your coffee, Ms. Edwards,”

“Thank you, love,” she replied, taking the cup and smiling, “Oh, and remember to come by my office before you leave today, alright?”

“Of course. I’ll see you then,” Liam nodded to both of them and then set back down the hallway.

Louis watched him go, shaking his head, “Private meeting, huh? I can’t believe you’re tearing him away from Zayn, he’s going to kill you,”

“Oh, that’s exactly why we’re meeting,” Perrie said breezily, “I’m promoting Liam today,”

Louis turned back to look at her, tilting his head, “You are?”

“Yes. He’s fantastic, we can’t very well have him going off to one of our competitors. Besides, Zayn already has enough people on his personal team as is, so I think Liam will be better off working on my own cases,” she delicately lifted her coffee cup to her lip and took a quick sip,

“Which, of course, means that Zayn will no longer be his superior, I will,”

“You know about them, don’t you?”

“Of course I know. Watching them dance around each other is exhausting, I might as well give them a way to finally do what they want,” she shrugged, “I mean, I _would_ like for the dust to settle first, just so Liam can prove he knows what he’s doing, but as long as they keep it out of the office, I’ll be happy,”

“You’re a true pioneer for love,”

Perrie rolled her eyes, taking another quick sip of her drink before turning around, back down the hallway.

“Email my wife, Louis,”

*******

“Harry?” Louis pounded his fist on the door, bouncing on his toes, “Hey, you didn’t book a charity book signing without telling me, did you?”

He sighed and allowed himself to come back down again, with both feet flat on the floor, but he frowned at the door. Harry usually answered it the second he knocked. He had every other time Louis had been here.

Which, at this point, was quite a lot.

It still wasn’t a big deal.

He knocked again and then sighed, before finally relenting to pulling out his phone.

_Let me in, you curly prick._

After a few seconds, he heard a series of clicks on the other side of the door, and it opened enough for Harry to poke his head out. His hair was down, but it was more wild than normal, and he had a thin grey sweatshirt tugged over his shoulders in a clear divergence from his normal choice of printed button-downs.

“Hey,” Harry greeted, his eyebrows cinching as he spoke, “What are you doing here?”

Louis shrugged, tucking his hands into his back pockets and bouncing once on his toes, “Well, it’s Sunday. And I always come bother you on Sundays,”

“Oh, right,” Harry shook his head slightly, his eyebrows creasing even more, “I guess I forgot,”

The door opened wider, and he nodded towards the inside hallway, “Come on in, then,”

“You should just give me that code of yours, it would save time,”

“Oh, that only unlocks three of the locks. The rest need manual keys,”

“Of course it does,”

Harry shrugged, waving his hand towards the kitchen as he passed it, “I don’t have a lot of food right now, sorry about that,”

While Harry wandered over to the living room, Louis opened the fridge and glanced over the shelves, before finally going to the freezer and settling for a lone carton of brownie bite ice cream on the top shelf. After finding a spoon in one of the drawers, he turned to go into the living room, pausing as he took in the current state of the rest of the kitchen. Most of it was as neat as ever, with the exception of the completely barren fruit bowl in the center, and the fact that most of the countertop had been taken over by loose stacks of paper.

“I’m in the middle of a lot of work stuff,” Harry explained from across the room, “Brainstorming and all,”

“I can see that,” Louis agreed. He opened the top of the carton and dug his spoon in as he scanned over the haphazard counter top. Most of the mess consisted of a mix of hand-written Post-Its and notebook paper alongside thick packets of typed out lists and notes. He picked up one of the stapled packets and flipped through it, then put it back and moved on to the next one.

“Ooh, you know, I quite like the ice sculpting idea,” he said, as he skimmed through one packet that had DECEMEBER scrawled across the top in bright blue Sharpie, “I mean, live ice sculpting on radio. You’re truly a pioneer of modern journalism,”

“Yeah, maybe,”

Louis set down the packet and looked over his shoulder. Harry was sitting on the arm of one of the larger chairs in the sitting area, long legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. He was flipping over the charm of his necklace with one hand, watching the movement of a lone pigeon circling outside.

Weird. Louis abandoned the paper mess and instead picked up his ice cream again as he crossed the room.

“Do you want me to leave?”

“What?” Harry looked up, his eyes wide, “No, of course not,”

“Okay. It’s just…you seem distracted,”

Harry tilted his head, and Louis expected a reply that he was just thinking, or tired, or some other bullshit he would then have to translate on his own.

But then.

“Um, so my mum kind of e-mailed me,”

Louis froze, his hand freezing in the middle of stirring half-melted ice cream and brownie bits, “What?”

“Yeah,” Harry laughed a little bit, shaking his head, “She doesn’t have my number anymore, so, she got the business email from the show’s website. One of the interns forwarded to me,”

“What the hell did she want?”

He shrugged, finally taking his fingers off his necklace, “Nothing. To talk, I guess. To see how I’m doing. To see if I want to come home soon,”

“You aren’t…you aren’t going to _do_ that, are you?”

“What, go back to London? No. I’m too busy,” he pushed himself off the arm of the chair and turned to cross the room, back towards the kitchen, “Not that I would even if I had the time,”

“Shit, did she say anything else?” Louis jogged after him, attempting to find anything in his voice that indicated that he was as upset as he should have been.

“She let me know how she was doing,” Harry replied, pulling open a drawer and rifling through it, “Apparently she started some talent agency for child actors,”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,”

“No, unfortunately not,” he closed the drawer, turning a large spoon over in both hands. He reached over and dipped it into the carton that was still gripped in Louis’s unmoving hands.

“Styles,” Louis said softly, “You—why are you not flipping shit right now?”

Harry shrugged quickly, pushing his ice cream-covered spoon into his mouth, “Because I’m fine,”

Louis frowned, watching him reach back for another bite from the carton. And another.

“Clearly you aren’t. You’re stress-eating,”

“I am not,”

Louis crinkled his nose and pulled the carton away from Harry’s encroaching spoon, “You don’t even _like_ this flavor, you twat,”

Harry glared at him, then blinked and then let the spoon drop to the countertop, splattering sticky chocolate drops all over the marble. Some it splashed onto a series of neon-colored Post-Its covered in a series of phone numbers.

“Fine,” he sighed, “I’m not fine,”

“Of course you aren’t, you wanker. This is your mum we’re talking about,” Louis said, setting the carton on the table and crossing his arms, “God, that woman is lucky there’s an ocean separating her from me…”

“Stop,” Harry cut in, shaking his head, “You can’t fight my battles for me, Louis. Not anymore,”

“I know that,” he said quickly. Harry raised an eyebrow and Louis looked away, “Sort of,”

He exhaled, leaning back into the countertop. His fingers went to his necklace again, twisting the chain tightly in his grip.

“It’s not me I’m worried about, anyways. I’m just scared she’s going to hurt them,” he said softly, “The kids at the agency, I mean. Like…what if she does the same things she did to me?”

“She’s not going to do that,”

“But how do you _know_?”

“Because there are laws against this shit, Jesus,” Louis said, “The only reason she got away with it with you was because you lived with her and had nowhere else to go,”  

“Yeah, but have you ever met show biz parents? They’re insane. If she tells them to do something to their kid just to get them a slightly better chance in the industry, they’ll do it,” he paused, tugging on the silver twisted between his fingers before continuing, “And you know what’s the worst fucking part? She’ll tell them about me. She’ll talk about _Maple Manor_ and how all the dieting and the closeting and all that shit worked for me…”

“No,” Louis cut in, “You are not a kid on a fucking teen drama anymore. You have a life for yourself. One you went out and got for yourself. She does not get to own that,”

“She’ll tell people she did,” he said weakly, “Knowing her, she’s tell them the radio show is all hers or something,”

“Damn it, then let her. You know you did it. I know you did it. Everyone that fucking matters knows that you did it by yourself,”

“I just…” Harry closed his eyes and shook his head, “What am I supposed to do now? Why couldn’t…why couldn’t she just have stayed out of my life like I wanted her to?”

He buried his head into his hands and slouched deeply into the countertop, his shoulders dropping. Even with his face covered, Louis knew he wasn’t crying—as much as he tried to deny it, Harry was an ugly, red face, deep gasps kind of crier—but there was something about seeing him so fucking defeated that made a flush of heat run straight through Louis’s body, made his cheeks burn and skin itch and hands clench, like they wanted to break something.

So he left the kitchen entirely, went straight for the living area, and started pulling the cushions off the couch.

Harry looked up, frowning as he watched Louis lean the cushions against the frame of the couch and push some of the armchairs together.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m building a fort,”

Harry’s frown deepened, “What?”

“I said, I am building a fort. Do you have a blanket? I need a blanket,”

Louis turned and set his sights on going down the short hallway, but before he could, Harry was in front of him, a hand gripped on Louis’s arm. His eyes looked tired—not wet or red but just _tired_ —but any other sign he had been crumpled in on himself a few moments before was gone now.

“Louis,” he said softly, “Why are you building a fort?”

Louis blinked, his throat suddenly going tight. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He was supposed to be able to help, the way he did years ago, in a different living room, when he could still make the argument he was taller than Harry and they both thought he could protect the two of them from everything.

“Because I don’t know what else to do, that’s why,” he finally said, a little harsher than he had intended, “And this used to work,”

He looked down, avoiding Harry’s eyes.

“It used to work,” he repeated. His eyes forced themselves to see patterns in the carpet so fascinating he couldn’t possibly look away.

“Louis,”

Okay, they weren’t that fascinating.

He looked back up, and Harry moved his thumb against Louis’s arm, letting go just as he began to understand what he was spelling out.

I-T-S-O-K

“There are some blankets in the hall closet,” Harry said, “Get the blue one, it’s the softest,”

*******

Not all of Louis’s beginning-ends were tragic. Some of them are good, through and through.

Like the one had started when Louis was still living in London, and one night he gotten out of bed at around midnight.

He had to be quiet—the cons of living in a giant, fairly empty house were the bloody _echoes—_ but he managed to slip to the kitchen for a slice of leftover chocolate cake and then back upstairs, down the hallway to Harry’s bedroom. His own room was only two doors down, but he spent half his time with Harry, anyways.

And tonight, he had a mission.

He managed to get the door open with minimal squeaking and flipped on the light, leaning his head in.

“Hey,” he whispered, “Styles,”

The blankets on the bed rustled and Harry poked his head out, his hair matted on one side and his cheeks bright pink.

“Hi,” he returned.

Louis lifted the plate in his hand and smiled softly, “I brought you some cake,”

“I can’t have cake,”

“I know, dummy,” Louis rolled his eyes, “That’s why I brought it to you _secretly_ ,”

“Then I guess it’s allowed,”

“Am I allowed, too, then?”

 Harry smiled and lifted the corner of his blanket, nodding to the other side of the bed, “Yeah, you are,”

Louis nodded, coming over and sliding himself under the blanket, setting the cake-filled plate in between the two of them.

“How are you doing, hm?” Louis asked as Harry accepted the plate and picked up the fork. He poked at the pastry repeatedly, but didn’t make a move to eat any of it.

“Not great,” he said softly. He kept poking at the cake, “Um, can I eat this later, actually? My stomach hurts right now,”

“Sure,” Louis took the plate back and lifted the covers enough to set the plate on Harry’s bedside table, and then covered himself again, “So, um, you two were really going at it tonight,”

Harry shrugged, “You say it like we don’t do that all the time,”

“I know, but—it was _really_ bad tonight,”

Harry just shrugged again.

“Harry, did she—she didn’t hit you again, did she?”

“ _No_. She doesn’t do that anymore,” he insisted, but in the next second he was crying.

“Louis,” he sobbed, “I just—I need to get out of here,”

Louis swallowed and reached out, resting a hand on Harry’s shoulder. He had said that before, and it always meant something different. Off _Maple Manor_. Out of his mother’s house. Out of his own head.

“Out of where?” he asked carefully.

“Out of this house. Out of London. Out of this fucking country,” Harry listed off, choking softly as he got the words out, “ _Out_ , Louis,”

Louis squeezed Harry’s shoulder, “What’s happening now, hm? Tell me what you talked about,”

Harry took a short, rattling, breath, and exhaled long and hard before he answered.

“Mum wants me to renew my contract for one more season. And then apparently she’s trying to get me on some war drama mini-series after that’s over…and it just never _ends_ ,” he sniffled, “And she wants to go out with another girl. She’s been making some calls and I’m supposed to go meet some of them tomorrow morning, pick which one I want to be seen with for the next…God, I don’t even know how long this time,”

He wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, leaving long, pink marks on his face.

“I can’t even have my tattoo, Louis. She told me I could if I just finished this season, and now I’m not allowed to get it anymore,” he swallowed thickly and then covered his face entirely,

“I just want it all to _stop_ ,”

Louis stayed quiet as Harry kept crying, feeling utterly useless. He wanted to protect this boy so badly, to fix things for him, but he wasn’t sure how much he could do anymore. He was already on thin ice, staying here for as long as he had. He was supposed to leave after the first year, after he turned eighteen and the press had died down. But instead Harry had insisted that he stay, and so Louis had gotten to remain under their roof with his uni paid for. Of course, there was no saying how long that would last if he kept pushing his luck.

But maybe…Harry could do something instead.

“Hey. I have an idea,” Louis said, pushing Harry’s shoulder, “You’ll be eighteen in a few months, right? And then you can renegotiate your contracts and get access to your own money, and do what you want,”

Harry shook his head so hard his curls bounced, “I don’t know if I can,”

“Why not, love?”

“I mean…I know I can, like, legally do all those things, but…” he shook his head again, “How am I supposed to face all this down, my mum and the show and just _everything_? And then walk away from that?”

“Because it’ll make you happy,” Louis said, “Isn’t that enough?”

“Maybe,” he admitted.

Harry’s eyes shifted, and he reached over and squeezed Louis’s hand so hard it tingled.

“I want you to come with me,” he said in a rush, “When I figure this out, I want you there with me,”

“Of course I will. We’ll run away together. You and me. Go anywhere you want, as far away as we can get,”

“I want to go to America, I think,” Harry said, “And when we get there, I want to go somewhere big, somewhere we can get lost,”

“Sure,” Louis agreed, “Anywhere. Anything you want,”

“Do you think you’d like to go to New York City? You can transfer to a school there, for your degree, and we can try to get into the same place. I haven’t even submitted all my uni admission forms yet, there’s probably still time,”

“Of course. That sounds perfect,”

Harry frowned, leaning forward. He squeezed Louis’s hand even harder.

“Louis,” he whispered, “I don’t want this to some fantasy. I want it to happen, I want to do this,”

Louis blinked. Even in the darkness under the blanket he could see the determined shine that coated Harry’s eyes, hear the shake in his voice as it echoed in his ears.

“I’ll make you a promise, then,” Louis said. He covered Harry’s hand in his own and squeezed softly, “You just get yourself out that contract of yours and we’ll go. I’ll even book our plane tickets,”

 Harry nodded, “Okay. Then that’s the plan,”

He paused, looking down at where their hands joined, “Um, can I have my cake now?”

Louis swallowed, nodding, “Of course you can,”

He got the plate again and gave it to Harry, and they took turns picking off pieces of the cake slice. Harry would talk about New York between bites, about what it would be like there, of what he wanted to do and see.

Louis listened to all of it, all the while not sure if everything they had said was for real or if it really was just another daydream, if Harry would actually go through with it or not.

He hoped he meant it. He really did.

*******

The blue blanket was definitely the softest.

The red one was okay, too, which was why it was the one they put on the floor, right on top of the white one that had the weird black and purple squiggles on it. The green one was kind of shit—Harry had apparently won it at some charity auction and hadn’t gotten to touch it to see how scratchy it was before he bid on it—so it was on top, draped over walls of stacked couch cushions and rapidly sagging in the middle.

But the blue one. Holy shit, the blue one. Louis wanted to be _buried_ with the blue one it was so soft. So naturally that was the one they chose to cover themselves in.

“This is a great fort,” Harry murmured. He had allowed Louis to grab most of the blankets so the soft blueness only went up to his waist, but he seemed content anyways, with his face in a stack of thick pillows as he regarded Louis.

“Yeah?” Louis asked.

“Yeah,” Harry yawned and stretched his legs out, kicking a cushion enough that it almost tipped over, “A little more cramped than I remember, though,” 

“Well, it’s not my fault you have a smaller living room now,” Louis said, “Or the legs of a fucking giraffe,”

“You’re terrible,” Harry huffed, reaching an arm over Louis’s torso, “Hand me the dried pineapple rings,”

Louis dug around in the pile of plastic bags at his side and came up with the right package, handing it off to Harry. His snack collection was horrendously pretentious, but…he had to admit the cayenne-sprinkled kale chips weren’t all that bad.

Harry tore open the dried fruit package and Louis took that as his cue to close his eyes and bury his head into one of the embellished throw pillows underneath him. It had to be getting late. Maybe it was dark out, even. He hadn’t exactly crawled outside the fort in a while.

“You tired?” Harry’s voice asked. Louis nodded, the ruffles on his pillow scratching his cheek.

“A little bit,” he admitted, “I could use a nap,”

“You can sleep, I won’t mind,”

“I can wait,” he yawned again but elected to ignore it, “Wanna stay up a little later. Hang out with you,”

He reached out to nudge Harry’s side but completely missed and just batted at air. He heard Harry laugh softly, and then speak.

“Hey, Lou?”

Louis opened his eyes to see Harry had turned to face him, his elbow propped up on a bead-covered pillow to keep his torso lifted off the floor.

Even though he was dying to stay exactly where he was, something made Louis rise up into the same position, elbow on a pillow, face to face.

“Yeah?” he asked.

Harry tilted his head, and the soft light of the desk lamp they had set up in the back of the fort caught on the long strands of hair that spilled over his shoulder, turning them electric gold.

“Thank you,” he said, “For coming over today,”

His voice was soft, but in it Louis could hear half a dozen things. _Thank for coming. Thank you for not leaving. Thank you for knowing what to do. Thank you for helping. Thank you for everything. Thank you._

“Yeah,” Louis replied, “Of course,”

Harry closed his eyes and nodded. A chunk of hair fell over his face and before he could think, Louis reached out and tucked it back behind his ear, brushing Harry’s cheek with his thumb as he did so.

Harry’s eyes fluttered open as he did, but he didn’t look like Louis’s touch had bothered him at all. If anything, he looked relaxed. Content. Happy.

Louis pulled his hand away slowly, letting his eyes flicker over Harry’s face, all warmth and sharp, sloping angles.

He wondered if he would ever look at him and not see the fifteen-year-old with the chubby cheeks who had sat silently in the passenger seat of a strange car when Louis had been picked up from the hospital after the accident. The sixteen-year-old who hurriedly downed hot tea to fix his cracked voice and covered the bruises on his chest and arms with scarves and long sleeves in summer. The seventeen-year-old Louis had smuggled pizza to when he wasn’t allowed to eat it.  
The eighteen-year-old who had looked out a plane window as the outline of Manhattan broke out from beneath the clouds and he smiled like he had just discovered a hidden treasure.

He wondered if Harry still saw him as the teenager that had just lost his family and spent too much time breaking things.

“What are you doing?” Harry asked. His eyebrows crinkled and he ducked his head, “You’re staring at me,”

Louis shook his head and reached out, catching his fingers underneath Harry’s chin. He lifted, slowly, and Harry’s gaze rose back up. Louis moved his hand from Harry’s chin to his cheek, and then back to his hair, pushing it all the way out of his face.

“You grew up on me,” he said, “When did you do that, huh?”

Harry didn’t answer, just reached up to touch Louis’s hand and pull it free from his hair. His linked Louis’s fingers with his own and squeezed tightly, leaning forward.

“You’re upset,” he murmured.

“I am not,”

“Yeah, you are. And you’re still a shit liar,” he squeezed their linked hands again, “Tell me what’s going on,”

Louis could have lied. But he was tired and his arm was going numb from staying propped up on that fucking pillow and there was a pair of green eyes boring a hole in his head, so…

“Sometimes I wonder if you need me anymore,” he said softly. He tugged his fingers out from Harry’s grasp and pulled his arm out from under him, laying back down again, “That’s all,”

Harry just looked at him, and Louis kept rambling.

“I mean, shit, Harry, you gave a nice apartment and a career and you’re rich and you have an actual fucking skincare routine, and I’m—“

_A former junkie who makes a living taking naked pictures of strangers and tracking down teenager runaways, who you don’t need in your fucking perfect life._

“—just me,”

Harry looked at him again, and then laid down right next to him, his face squished into the beaded pillow, his hair falling over his face once again.

“Of course I need you,” he said. He reached out and caught two knuckles under Louis’s chin, “You’re my Louis,”

Louis laughed weakly, “You bloody sap.” Harry ignored him.

“You’re always going to be the reason I’m here,” he continued, “In New York, doing what I want to do with my life, and not stuck in London, washed up and doing toothpaste commercials my mum booked for me,”

“You give me too much credit,” Louis protested. His throat felt tight. His eyes were burning.

Shit, was he crying?

“You’re crying,” Harry said.

Fuck.

Louis blinked rapidly and swallowed, hoping it would do the trick. It didn’t, not really, but at least he could still talk.

“I’m so happy I could do that for you,” he got out, “You deserve it more than anyone else in the world,”

_Sometimes I think the only good thing I’ll ever do is help you shine. And I would be okay with that._

He wanted to say it.

“Besides, you wouldn’t have done toothpaste commercials,” he said instead, “You may be a former child star but you’d get something classier, for sure. Japanese vibrators or something,”

Harry tilted his head back and laughed, the kind of barking laugh that made it sound like he was choking, and Louis felt his throat seize up again and his chest felt someone had stepped on it, but he didn’t mind it. He felt the sudden urge to pull Harry against him, to sit on his stomach and hold his arms down and press kisses to his nose and his cheeks and his hairline.

Louis blinked.

What the hell.

He was tired. Extremely tired. Clinically under-rested and emotionally drained tired. That was it. That was all it was. 

“You know—“ Harry choked out, “I—think I got sent one once?”

“A what?” Louis was out of it. This wasn’t good.

“A Japanese vibrator. Or, maybe just a random sex toy. It was shaped like a foot,”

“Oh my god,” Louis allowed a laugh to break free from his chest, “Did you _use_ it? Actually, you know what, I don’t want to know,”

“I _didn’t_ ,” Harry giggled. He was giggling. Sweet Lord, “But I did get this kind of cool Brazilian butt plug once—“

“Okay, okay, enough of that,” Louis reached over and smacked his shoulder before he sat up, pushing the pillows up against the firm frame of the couch, “Get on Netflix and pick a movie for us,”

“Don’t you need to go home soon?”

“Why, you kicking me out?” Louis shook his head, “Nah, I can stay. I know you probably go in early tomorrow, you can just leave me and I’ll just get some breakfast for myself and head out as soon as I can. Leave me some keys and a four-page instruction packet for that monster door of yours and I’ll even lock up,”

Harry just blinked.

“You’re staying,”

“Yes,” Louis resisted the urge to roll his eyes, “I am,”

Harry blinked again, and then finally smiled.

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll—I’ll get a movie for us, then,”

Louis ignored how his chest was being crushed, slowly but surely, by how much he loved seeing Harry happy, and how brilliantly pink his mouth was.

_Oh. Oh God._

He buried himself back against the pillows and pulled the soft, soft blue blanket to his slowly-but-surely crushed chest. He breathed. Smiled.

“Pick something good, Styles,”

*******

Sometimes Louis wondered if he and Harry would be friends in a different world. Or at least, in a different version of their own world. If Louis’s family had crossed that intersection without a problem, if he had never moved in with Harry’s family and had never gotten powers, would he have still randomly run into Harry in the halls on a day he was actually in school? Would he accidentally spill something on Harry’s shirt and need to walk him to his own house so Louis could give him a hoodie to borrow? Even if they had met, would they even like each other?

If he had ever asked Harry this, he probably would’ve laughed and said that of course they would still be friends. But Louis wasn't so sure. He and Harry felt too different at times, when stripped of their shared decade together, different tastes and interests and personalities.

This became increasingly clear as Louis sat by his window the day after Harry’s email disaster and listened to his best friend’s cheerful voice chirp out of his speakers. There was no trace of the fear, pain or exhaustion Louis had seen the previous day, and Louis forced himself to blow out his cigarette smoke slowly, wrapping himself in the burning sensation it left in his throat as he thought.

Harry had channeled his pain into hard work and now had an apartment far above the city and his name in the tabloids. Louis unspooled in the face of his pain and did nothing to fix it.

 

Maybe some would argue that wasn’t true. Louis had his own business, he had quit drinking. Those were accomplishments to other people. But to him they were survival. He had needed alcohol to survive, and then he didn’t. He needed money to survive and nowhere to go with his degree, so he did something else. He was almost twenty-seven, and surviving was the only thing he had managed.

Harry did not do things to survive. Harry did things to live.

At one point, though, Harry had just been trying to survive, too.

Maybe that was why they were friends.

Harry’s voice continued in the background, and Louis tuned back in enough to realize he was interviewing some up-and-coming designer who was already set to working on a gown for the coming years’ Met Gala, even though the event was nearly a full year away. Louis remembered a couple years after they had gotten to New York, he and Harry had tried to sneak around the gate of the Met Gala, just to get a peek, and they had almost gotten ripped apart by one of the security guards. Of course, not before Louis had looked over his shoulder, shouted, “Hi, Ms. Knowles, we love your work!” just as Beyoncé was getting out of her limo, and then grabbed Harry’s hand and sprinted away, wheezing as he tried to breath and laugh at the same time.

Louis had done things to live once, too.

He tuned out again, then, and instead grabbed for his phone and pulled up his online bank balance. It was one of the things he checked when he needed comfort, a quick reassurance that maybe things weren’t so bad. Not his checking balance, which was stretched drum-tight, allowing enough for rent and food and cigarettes. Rather, he looked at the swollen number in his savings account, where most of his paycheck went.

If he used any of the money in the account, he could probably move, replace the leather jacket that was rapidly falling apart as was, go on a vacation, and still have a decent amount left over. Instead, he felt it there, let it grow, just so he could look at it and all the promise it held.

The promise that one day, when he reached some indistinct goal he had not decided on fully yet, he could live again and not survive.

After a few minutes of staring at the number on his screen, he put the phone down just as Harry let out a cheerful laugh, and Louis had to close his eyes until they burned. He refused to be angry at Harry for living while he could not. He refused to compare their pain. He refused to do anything but package his feelings up into a tight box that he kept in the back of his mind, full of all the pain and anger and fear he did not want to sort out.

Pain, anger, and fear, he had learned, were three more things he did not need to survive.

*******

Zayn was happy.

Like, more than happy. An ecstatic, floating kind of happy. Happy enough that when Louis walked into his office he was humming, very loudly, while typing up a spreadsheet.

Pretty much, he was the opposite of how Louis felt.

Lately, that twitchy feeling that had plagued him all through the last month had only gotten worse. Today, it was so bad he had been late getting out of the house because he checked the windows so many times. He had a throbbing migraine, his stomach hurt, and he kept feeling like he had forgotten something extremely important, even though he kept his work calendar constantly updated and had already checked it five times that morning.

He probably had a flu bug or something. He hadn’t gotten horribly sick since he was sixteen—weird superpower side effect or something—but, there was always a first.

Zayn paused in his typing and turned his chair around, smiling.

Smiling. At work. With Louis. Yeah, shit, he really was happy.

“Good morning, Louis,” he said, “How are you this morning?”

“Just swell,” he mumbled, rubbing at his eye, “Where’s your boyfriend?”

Zayn smiled even wider and leaned back in his chair, locking his fingers together and tucking them behind his head.

“Oh, Liam’s doing some investigation for one of Perrie’s cases right now. He’s doing well, of course,”

“Fantastic,”

“You doing alright? You look kind of out of it,”

“I’m fine,” Louis snapped, and then rubbed both of his temples as hard as his fingers could manage, “I just…have a headache. And it’s too hot,”

“It’s probably too hot because you insist on wearing that bloody leather jacket all the time,” Zayn said, “By the way, have you been back to therapy yet?”

“What? No, I haven’t. Why, did Perrie tell you about that?”

“Yes, she did,” he replied, “And quite frankly, that woman has done more for me in the last few weeks than I could ever ask for, so if she says jump, I will attempt to channel your superhuman abilities if that’s the answer to ‘how high’,”

Louis set his jaw, “Just because you’re getting laid now doesn’t mean you get to tell me what to do,”

“You’re right,” Zayn shrugged, “I get to tell you what to do because I’m your boss, and I get to give you very pointed recommendations because you’re my friend. Also, I’m willing to extend the employee’s health insurance to you to pay for the sessions,”

“Not interested,”

“You sure? You get full dental and everything,”

“I—you can’t _deny me healthcare_ for a full year and then use it as a blackmail tool,”

“Sure I can. This is America,” Zayn rifled through a stack of papers on his desk and then handed over a set of black folders, “Now, I have a few new clients here. One insider trade deal, two affairs, and one reckless abandonment. Nothing you can’t handle, I’m sure,”

“Sounds thrilling,” Louis sighed, reaching out to accept the folders, “God, how many people can cheat on each other in one city?”

Zayn shrugged, “Ask a divorce lawyer. I can give you a separate card for that,”

Louis’s head throbbed again, this time with added vigor that made him wince. He rubbed his forehead and tried to ignore it, “I’ll pass for now,”

“Suit yourself,” Zayn turned back to his computer, unlocking his fingers and bringing them back down to the keyboard, “Aside from completely ignoring your mental health, how are things? Business good? That camera I sent you working?”

“Everything’s just fine,”

“Great,” Zayn tapped at the keyboard, opening a new window, “In that case, I’m going to get back to work. But call me if you need anything. Or if you want to get lunch. We should get lunch sometime, actually,”

Louis frowned, tucking his folders against his chest.

“I can’t decide if I like this version of you or if I hate it,”

Zayn’s laughter followed him across the hall as he left the office.

*******

Louis went home, setting the stack of folders on his desk, and then promptly ignored them for the rest of the day. He fielded a few calls—most of them were simple follow-ups, thank God—and then spent the rest of his day clicking in and out of windows on his laptop, shuffling around papers, and retreating to the window to breath in all the air he could manage. He emptied what was left of his cigarettes, and then opened up his back-up pack. He took off his jacket, and then his shirt, and turned on his cheap rotating fan and stood right in front of it, but nothing could quite make him to focus.

It felt like he was being stretched, or crushed, or eaten from the inside. Or everything, all at once.

None of it was good, and it wasn’t getting better. It had _never_ been this bad.

Eventually, the sky darkened enough that it was fruitless trying to scrap any more productivity out of the day. He reheated some old pasta, took a couple Advils, and then crashed into bed, letting himself melt into the sheets he really needed to wash.

He closed his eyes.

Things would get better in the morning. They had to get better.

All he had to do was sleep.

*******

There was one more beginning-end.

It wasn’t the most important. Louis refused to put it above the others. Refused to put it above his mum and his sisters and Harry. But it was always there, lurking, looming, demanding his attention, no matter how much he tried to push it away.

It was in February. February second, actually. He was bad with dates, usually, but he remembered because it had been the day after Harry’s birthday. It had been a small party that year, Harry’s work friends and Louis and a few trays of shots at some bar. And then Louis had gone back to Harry’s apartment and they’d slept in the same bed, the way they used to when they were teenagers, facing opposite directions on the mattress, with their socked feet in each others’ faces. They woke up at three in the afternoon the next day, hung over, and ate two and a half bowls of cereal each over the course of the day. Louis had finally left at seven, right as it was starting to get dark.

It was a good day. Louis had a job teaching fourteen year olds world history and Harry was freshly twenty-one. The whole world was at their feet.

And then the entire world ended—and began--because Louis took a different route home.

He was just crossing over to a different subway station. He just wanted to walk a little further. He probably wanted to go to the Korean market in Harry’s old neighborhood that sold the weird yogurt he liked.

It didn’t matter. What mattered was that there some builders doing construction on the sidewalk right in front of him, and one of them dropped a cement block. Louis was close enough to hurry and grab it before it hit the ground, and then he put it back in the waiting stack of unused blocks. Not a big deal. The workers were old, local, had probably been around for the first wave of mutants in the seventies. Nothing they hadn’t seen before. And they didn’t care, as it turned out. Just grunted, thanked him, and moved on.

But then Louis had heard a laugh behind him, and clapping.

He froze and then turned slowly, already prepared to run. Most of the city had gotten over the damage done during the Avengers’ intergalactic attack nearly a year prior, but a lot still hadn’t gotten over their hatred of anything slightly less than human. He didn’t want to get into a fight, not now.

But when he turned, there wasn’t an angry mob waiting for him. There was only one man. He was dressed in a long, dark pea coat with a thick fur collar, the kind of coat Harry would look at longingly when Louis walked home with him from his internship on the upper side of the city. Dark hair, neat beard, wide, wide smile. He was still clapping, the sound slightly softened by his supple leather gloves.

“That was wonderful,” he said, still smiling, still laughing. Louis felt cornered, like something bad was going to happen. The man seemed to sense this, and put his gloved hands up in a surrender.

“Oh, no, don’t worry. I’m going to report you to anyone, darling. I’m a friend,” he frowned softly when Louis didn’t seem to react, “I said, _relax_ ,”

Automatically, Louis felt his muscle ease up, his hand drop to his sides, his stomach uncoil.

“Good. Now come here,”

Louis’s feet moved forward, until he was right in front of the man. Up close he could smell the thick, expensive cologne that wafted off of him. It made him feel safer, somehow, although he couldn’t figure out why.

“Goodness, look at you,” the man smiled. He had such a white smile, up close. So white it hurt to look at, “What’s your name?”

“Louis,” he heard himself say. His tongue was loose and his head was light, but it felt nice, “Louis Tomlinson,”

“That’s it?” the man laughed, “No superhero name?”

Louis blinked and shook his head. He had wanted to do that, once. Get a fake name, a costume, save people. It had been stupid but he had wanted it.

“No, just…just Louis,”

“Okay. I quite like that, actually,” the man nodded, “Tell me, Louis…what else can you do?”

Louis frowned slightly. He could lift things. He could jump. It was hard to hurt him. But he couldn’t seem to say any of that. The words didn’t want to connect together.

“What do you want me to do?” he eventually asked.

The man smiled, like he had said exactly the right thing. Louis’s entire body filled with warmth.

“Nothing special. I mean, we’ll have time for that, I’m sure,” the man told him, “Can you do one thing for you, though? Right now?”

“Yes,” Louis answered breathlessly.

“Smile for me. Nice and big,”

Louis did. He smiled so hard his cheeks hurt and his teeth smarted from the cold air. He smiled harder than he had when he got his ID photo taken for work, when he graduated uni, when he had seen Harry’s face as they boarded the first plane leaving London for New York.

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” the man praised. Louis didn’t know his name, still. Maybe that should have bothered him. It didn’t, “You’re lovely, Louis. Just lovely,”

Louis felt his body rush with warmth again. He was still smiling. His cheeks had practically gone numb.

“You can stop smiling now. You did such a nice job,” the man said. Immediately, let Louis both corners of his mouth relax. The man nodded, then clasped his hands, leaning his head forward.

“Now, would you like to go get some dinner with me?”

Louis needed to go home. He needed to get ready for work, needed to sleep off the last of his headache. Besides, he had already eaten. Harry had insisted on making him a milkshake before he left his apartment, because Harry had mint chip in the freezer and he knew mint chip was Louis’s favorite.

But he couldn’t remember any of that now. His head didn’t hurt, his stomach felt empty, and work seemed a million miles away.

“I’d love that,”

“Excellent,” the man smiled again and then held up a hand, yelling, “Stop!”

A cab Louis hadn’t even seen coming down the street halted, its tires squealing on the asphalt. The man strode over and opened the back door, leaning in and calmly saying, “Out,”

A moment later, a man and woman climbed out of the back, their eyes blinking in confusion, but they still walked off in the opposite direction, right in the middle of the road. The unnamed man turned back to Louis, nodding towards the inside of the cab. The fur of his collar rustled against his face as he did, “Come on, get in. I’m going to take you somewhere nice,”

Something was telling Louis to run very, very far away. Something was telling him that there was something wrong with what he had just seen, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was.

So he crossed the road and stood at the door of the cab, ready to get in. But before he did, he felt a soft squeeze at the base of his neck and a voice at his ear.

“I can already tell you are going to make me very happy, Louis,”

*******

It was too hot.

That was the only thing Louis could process when he woke up, was that is was too goddamn hot. Hot enough that the thickness of the air seeped into his brain, clouding everything, making him ache, making it hard to breath.

Slowly, he rose into a sitting position, ignoring the dull pain at the base of his neck, the way the sheets protested as he peeled them off his bare legs. He blinked blankly at the wall in front of him, and then to his right. There was the dirty door and the shoebox closet, on the other side there was the permanently closed window and the radiator that hadn’t been replaced since the 1980’s. They all slipped into his vision but none of them made sense. The details looked wrong, like they had been changed, or he had forgotten something miniscule about them that now seemed like the most important thing in the world.

He needed to leave. He needed to leave right now.

Jeans. Shirt. Jacket. Boots. Keys. Out of the door, down the hallway, down the back staircase. The elevator was broken. No. The elevator had been broken the first week he moved in. It worked now. It was too late, though.

He stepped out onto the sidewalk, turning to look on both sides. It was a long way to where he needed to go. Briefly, he thought about the rattling of the early-morning subway, with the lights that were bright and pale and punishing, buzzing with failing power. Empty cars with dirty floors and sticky seats.

Walk. He would walk.

*******

Eventually, Louis stopped walking.

One moment he was plowing forward, the sights, sounds, and smells around him completely blocked out, his only focus on moving, getting to where he needed to be—and then in the next passing second it was over. His feet stopped moving, and he blinked, disorientated, as his environment finally soaked back into his senses. There was a faint blaring of traffic off in the distance and the air smelled like tar and garbage, curdling in the thick, humid air. He shifted as he began to feel the ache in his feet and legs.

He glanced around, trying to figure out where he was. Even in the darkness there were a few streetlights blasting dark orange light onto the unevenly paved sidewalks, beyond that he could make out a small parking lot, the yellow lines faded and partially covered by loose gravel.

And then, right across the street from him, was a factory building. It wasn’t very tall, only about three stories, and crumbling, at that. The heat-scorched brick and broken, yellowed windows appeared to be sliding over each other in prolonged their race to the ground. A single, shiny metal door installed on the bottom floor indicated it was still at least partially in use; some of the windows and chunks of brick on the bottom level looked newer, replaced.

They hadn’t been that way the last time he had been here.

Because he _had_ been here.

Another roll of pain ran through his exhausted feet, and slowly, shakily, Louis sat down on the curb. There was a swatch of black, tarred street separating him from the building, but he felt its presence as if he was still trapped inside its walls, tearing up the rotten floorboards of an abandoned workroom until his entire body hurt, until his nose and mouth burned with the sawdust he was inhaling.

Why had he walked here? Why had he even gotten up in the first place? What was he _doing_ here?

He wrapped his arms around his legs and buried his face into his knees, rocking back and forth.

“Charles, Willow Grove, Shade,” he muttered, “Charles, Willow Grove, Shade. Charles, Willow Grove, Shade. Charles—“

He kept repeating it, until he was slurring through the names, until it was barely helping anymore, but he didn’t know what else to do. He just kept repeating it, hoping it would get better, like it would make the factory and his memories of it and the fact he had returned here for absolutely no reason go away.

“Louis,”

At the sound of a voice behind him, Louis quickly lifted his head and pulled his arms off of his legs, balling his hands into fists and tucking them up against his chest.

“Hey, relax, relax,”

He blinked and lowered his fists slightly, but still kept them balled so tightly his knuckles hurt.

“Niall?”

“Hey,” The other man stood behind him, near the entrance of a long-abandoned housing building. He had on a bleached-wrecked sweatshirt and two different-colored trainers, and he looked more alert than Louis had ever seen him.

“What…what are you doing here?” Louis got out.

“I heard you out in the hallway, got a little worried,” Niall scuffed the sidewalk with the toe of his shoe, “I kind of followed you here,”

“You did?” Louis frowned, “I didn’t hear you,”

“Well, then I guess it’s good it was me and not someone else,” Niall replied. He kept toeing the asphalt, and eventually he nodded to the shallow curb, “Can I sit down?”

Louis turned away, finally letting his fists loosen as he set his hands back on his knees, “I guess so,”  

“Thanks,” Niall sat down next to him, too close, their shoulders pressing together. Louis didn’t move, “What were you mumbling just now? Before I interrupted, I mean,”

“Oh. Uh, they’re street names,” Louis answered, “From where I grew up. Helps me focus,”

Niall nodded, making a small sound of agreement, and then sighed.

“Okay, I’m going to just ask. Why the hell are you here?”

Now that was a good question. Louis still had no idea why he had gotten up in the middle of the night—he still had no idea what time it was—and come here, of all places, but he at least knew why it was important.

“This is where my ex died,” he finally said. He didn’t know where the words came from—it sounded wrong to call him an ‘ex’, like it was a choice to pursue him and then stay with him all those years, “A couple years ago,”

“Shit,” Niall said, “Was it—was it that bus crash?”

“Yeah, it was,” Louis replied, “I saw it happen,”

“ _Shit_ ,” Niall repeated, “I didn’t think there were any witnesses,”

“There was one,” he said, “He just never bothered to say anything,”

“Why the hell not?”

“I wanted it to happen,” Louis replied. And then, “I pushed him,”

There was a beat of dead silence. A long, high horn blared in the distance, closer to the more populated part of the city.

“Mate,” Niall eventually said, “You’re gonna have to elaborate on that one,”

“He—“ Louis tried to begin, but his throat felt thick and unmoving, “He was a really fucking bad person,”

“How bad?”

“Uh,” Louis wrung his hands together, watching his skin pull tight over his pronounced knuckles, “So—you know how I can do things normal people shouldn’t be able to do, right?”

“Are you trying to say that you’re one of those mutants?” Niall asked, “Mate, hate to break it to you, but you didn’t do a great job of keeping that a secret,”

“Shut up,” he murmured, “And I’m not a mutant. That’s a genetic thing. I got my powers in an accident,”

“I don’t give a shit. Keep going,”

“Anyways, he was one, too,” Louis continued, “He had powers, I mean. Mind control. Was really, really good at it,”

“Did he make you do something?”

“Yes,”

_Well, that was an understatement._

“Louis,” Niall’s voice came over, a little harsher, more careful, “What, exactly, did he make you do?”

Louis shook his head, looking out into the collapsing pile of brick and metal and glass across the street. He could sit here all night, hell, all week, all month, telling Niall stories about every single that happened to him over those two years. Could probably tell him stories until a team of bulldozers rumbled over to finally tear down this entire neighborhood.

“Love him,” he finally said, “He made me love him,”

Niall shook his head and leaned back, “ _Shit_ ,”

Louis’s throat felt so thick he was surprised he could still speak, but the next words tumbled out of his mouth like he’d been practicing them for years, which he kind of had, when he thought through that had happened here, that night. What it would feel like to open his mouth and admit had he had done.

“He took me here one night, after we went out to dinner. He did that a lot, those last few months. Would take me out to dinner and let me have my favorite dessert and not even cut it in half, or take me shopping and buy me new shoes I didn’t need or really want, and then take me somewhere because he wanted something. There was something hidden in the floorboards here, and he made me dig it up for him. It was in a box, and I didn’t know what it was, but it seemed important. Then we went outside, and there was this bus coming around the corner right as we were walking out, and I--I just thought about how much I would give to have that fucking bus nail him, dead-on, you know? So I pushed him,”

He took a deep breath, the memory coming back to him in a bright, shiny tangle of details. The blinding glow of the headlight. The color of his coat as he hit the bus. The scream that Louis only could identify as his own in hindsight.

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone else, but he hit the bus and then the whole thing just kind of—“ he held out a hand, flat with his palm pointed towards the ground, and then flipped it over so his palm was pointing up, “I ran the hell out of there before anything else happened. But I heard about it, later. They found his body underneath when they moved the bus off the street,”

Niall didn’t say anything for a while, just let the humid, rancid air fill up the gaps in their conversation.

When he spoke again, Louis expected him to just exhale another _Shit_. Instead…

“What was his name?”

“His…his name?”

“Yeah,” Niall shrugged, “I don’t…if they printed his name in the papers, I don’t remember it. My memory’s absolute shit,”

They hadn’t printed it. Louis had managed to check every newspaper, blog, and random Twitter account that had discussed the story and no one had identified the pedestrian under the vehicle. He hadn’t made very many connections. He had wanted it that way.

“Alex,” Louis said after a while, “His name was Alex,”

The name felt odd in his mouth, foreign and unwelcome. Louis had referred to Alex simply as _Him_ in his head for so long. Usually capitalized, italicized, like he was a god. Easier to think of him that way than as a man.

“Alex,” Niall repeated, “Huh. That sounds so…I don’t know, not right,”

“Yeah,” Louis shrugged, “It’s fucked up, huh?”

“No shit,” Niall leaned forward, resting his forehead on his knees, “God, I feel sick. And I didn’t even live through this shit,”

“Don’t give yourself a stomachache on my account,” Louis said, “And, ah, I know it’s a little late to ask, but are you high right now?”

“Shit, I wish I was,”

“Okay. Just…wanted to see if there was any chance you were going to remember any of this,”

“I’m not going to report you or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Niall mumbled into his knees, “For the super strength or the very justifiable murder,”

“You’re a gem,” Louis sighed, rubbing his forehead, “God, I could use a drink right now,”

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Niall shifted his head so his cheek was lying pressed against his jeans, “I’ve got some stuff if you want it, though. Does weed break your sobriety pledge at all?”

“I don’t know, I’ll look it up,” Louis shrugged, “So, what the fuck do we do now? Should we go home?”

“Not yet,” Niall murmured, “Wanna stare at this piece of shit building a little longer, really matches how I feel inside,”

“Yeah,” Louis agreed, leaning forward and encircling his knees with his arms again, “Me too,”

*******

When Louis woke up, he was in his bed, alone, and he had a headache. There was a thick plastic baggie of weed sitting on Louis’s bedside table, with a hot pink sticky note that has HAVE FUN, BITCH scribbled on it in smeared ballpoint pen, that Niall must have dropped off at some point in the night.

He remembered everything. He really, really wished he didn’t.

After a few minutes he forced himself to get out of bed, just for the sake of getting some Advil from his bathroom, and then shuffled into the living room when he realized his phone wasn’t in its usual place on his bedside table. Sure enough, it was sitting on top of his laptop, and his screen told him he had slept in until about two in the afternoon, that he was down to ten percent battery…

And that he had two missed calls from Harry.

He frowned at this last detail, and went back into the bedroom to get his charger. He plugged the phone in and sat on his bed, knees pulled to his chest as he dialed him back.

Had something happened to him?

God, please, no. Not today, of all days.

The line picked up after a few rings, and Harry’s voice came on, breathless, “Louis? Louis, hi,”

“Hey,” Louis relaxed a bit at the sound of his voice—he was alive, okay, one box checked off—but his tone made him nervous, “What’s going on? Is something wrong?”

“No, nothing’s wrong. Nothing with me, at least,”

“Um, okay. Well, you called me twice. And you sound really freaked out right now,” A thought crossed his mind, quick and wild, and Louis lowered his voice, “Harry—Harry, did you get _kidnapped_?”

“What? No, of course not. I’m fine, Lou,”

Louis wished the nickname didn’t relax him as much as it did, but…fuck, it did.  

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Harry continued, “Are you?”

“Yeah, of course I’m okay,”

_Sure you are._

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” he continued.

“Uh—“ Harry’s voice wavered, and his breath crackled over the line, “Well, uh, today’s the anniversary,”

“Of what?”

“The bus crash, Lou,”

“The—“ All at once, felt like a hand had reached into Louis’s chest and squeezed, digging in its fingernails and all, “The bus crash?”

“Yeah. It’s July 8th. I thought you knew, ” Harry replied, “I—Lou? You still with me?”

“I’m here,” Louis answered. His throat felt dry. He was probably having a panic attack. Or about to have one. That was a normal reaction, right?

At least this explained a lot.

“I’m—“ his voice sounded weak and he cleared his throat to try again, but instead he just came out sounding worse, “I—Harry, on second thought, I don’t think I’m okay,”

“Okay. That’s alright, that’s normal,” Harry’s voice had switched tones, from deeply concerned to achingly calm, “Stay on the line, okay? You hearing me?”

“Yes, I’m hearing you, you dick,” Louis huffed, “Um, can I come over?”

“No,” Harry answered immediately, “I mean, I—I don’t want you coming all the way across town if you’re upset. Can I come to yours? Would that be alright?”

Louis looked up. The stain on his ceiling had gotten bigger in the last few weeks. It looked kind of like an elephant. There was a pile of unwashed clothes that stretched from his bedroom window to the doorway and at least five dirty bowls in his kitchen sink. His door was broken, again, and he hadn’t bothered to call a locksmith yet. In the stairway on the way up to his floor, there was a wall that had a massive brown stain on it. Louis was pretty sure it was blood.

Harry. Here.

“I don’t know,” he eventually answered, “I’m not—I’m not exactly in the nicest place,”

“I can handle Hell’s Kitchen, Louis,” Harry insisted, “Look, it’ll be okay. I’ll cook for you, we’ll hang out. I don’t mind, really,”

“Um,” Louis swallowed, “I need to—I gotta clean up a little bit,”

“You can leave your place like it is. I don’t care,”

He swallowed again. Those fucking broken windows were filthy, too. Did those cocaine dealers still live on the floor below him? He didn’t know.

Harry. Here. Harry. Here

“Alright,” he heard himself say, “I’ll text you the building address. And my apartment number and…stuff,”

What the fuck.

“Bring groceries. I haven’t gone shopping at all,”

 _What the fuck_.

“Okay, I will,” he could hear sounds on Harry’s end. Keys being picked up. Feet shuffling, “I’m going to go shopping, and then I’m getting a cab, and I will be there within the hour. Okay?”

A pause. A breath.

“Lou, say okay. Please,”

Louis swallowed hard.

Fuck it.

He was clearly having a mental breakdown, his feet hurt, and he was starving.

He needed someone.

“Okay,”

*******

Louis meant to clean up. He did. Because even if Harry had told him not to, everything was still a mess and he wanted to fix it, just for the sake of fixing _something_. But instead he took a shower, wrapped himself in a hoodie, and sat cross-legged on top of his desk, right in the middle of all the papers he hadn’t put away.

He was still sitting there when the door opened, and he didn’t even flinch at the sound until he processed that Harry was right in front of him. Louis looked up as Harry smiled softly and reached up to pull Louis’s hood down.

“Hey,” he whispered.

“Hi,” Louis returned, “I—I didn’t clean up,”

“It’s okay,” Harry said, but his voice was tight, like it was anything but okay, “I, ah, brought you something,”

He held up a paper bag and shook it a little, holding it right under Louis’s nose.

“Do you like Ethiopian?”

“Yeah. I—I love it, actually,” Louis reached out to take the bag from Harry and then held it in his lap. He thumbed at where the top of the bag was folded over and stapled in place, not looking up, “Thanks,”

“It’s alright,” Harry said, “So, shitty day, yeah?”

Louis shrugged a little too fast and kept picking at the paper bag, “I’ve had worse,”

Harry gave him a small, tight smile, and then grabbed the back of Louis’s head and pulled him into a rather awkwardly positioned hug. Louis huffed as he was smothered against Harry’s annoyingly perfect pectoral muscles, because of course he hadn’t even bothered to button up his designer shirt.

“How are you still taller me than me when I’m sitting on a _desk_?” he mumbled against Harry’s chest.

Harry didn’t say anything, instead just stood completely still, holding Louis against his chest. Just as Louis was about to complain that one, he was losing the ability to breath, and two, the still-hot takeout was burning a hole in his leg, Harry pulled away and gave him another smile.

“Let’s have lunch,” he suggested. He glanced over his shoulder and frowned, “Do, you, um, have a table?”

“Yes, I have a table, I’m not _that_ poor,” Louis sighed. He unfolded his legs and slid off the desk, walking over to his kitchen, “Come on,”

Harry trailed closely behind him, like he was afraid he would get lost in the microscopic space. Louis did his best to just carry on, pointedly trying to keep it together. He put the bag of food on the table, dug through his drawers for a fork, filled a glass up with water, and then went back to the table. Harry was still standing by his chair, not sitting down, and Louis pulled his chair hard against the floor, so the legs scraped loudly against the tile as he sat down and pulled the bag towards him.

“Sit,” he said, and Harry did, folding his hands on top of the table as Louis unpacked Styrofoam containers of _atkilt wot_ and _timatim salata_ and a foil-wrapped stack of _injera_. Harry had gotten all of his favorites, even though Louis had never told him, because…well, because of course he had.

Louis started in on the food, ripping the porous bread into pieces and dragging them through the spiced meat and potatoes before scooping bites of it into his mouth.

“Thanks for this,” he mumbled around a mouthful of food, “I need to go shopping. Probably should’ve gone today, really, but I guess meltdowns tend to throw a wrench in those plans,”

“Yeah, sure,” Harry said quietly. Louis looked up, reaching for his water. His mouth burned from all the spice in the food, but…small sacrifices. He took a drink and then gestured to all the food spread out in front of him.

“You hungry?”

“I’m okay,” Harry shrugged, “It’s for you,”

Louis just stared at him, his sauce-stained fingertips holding a soggy piece of bread as Harry just stared back, his eyes wide and unreadable.

“Okay,” Louis said slowly. He lifted the food in his hand to his mouth and chewed, slowly, until Harry looked away, towards the window. Louis could tell by the way his eyes moved that he was looking at the thick dirt that was packed into the edges, the streaky glass and the cheap curtains, things that never quite went away.

Louis finished his lunch in silence. By the time he was done he mouth felt like it was on fire, and Harry was staring at him again. Well, not steadily staring. Quick, unsure glances every now and then, while his eyes fell on everything else. The crack in one of the cabinet doors and the unwashed dishes and the weird purple stain on one of the floor tiles. Louis wiped at the corners of his mouth and then reached for his water, hoping Harry would maybe say something, crack a joke, _do anything_ , but he kept staring at Louis and everything around him, and when Louis was done with his water, he snapped.

“Harry,” he sighed, “Please stop looking at me like that,”

Harry stopped, his eyes going wide—he was looking over Louis’s shoulder, probably towards the bright green paper that was taped to the dishwasher that read _RMBR CALL SOMEONE TO FIX THIS FUCKING THING,_ a reminder Louis had yet to actually act on _._

“Like what?” he asked, and Louis snorted.

“Like I’m pathetic,” he said, and then held up a hand, “Don’t deny it, please. I get it. It looks like I live in the aftermath of a crime scene, and I’m having a mental breakdown as we speak,”

Harry frowned, and he shook his head.

“I hate when you talk like that,” he said, and Louis squinted at him.

“ _Like what?_ ” he asked. He felt tired, and the back of his head felt dull and tight, like something had hit him there. He wanted to lay down, really, to hit rewind and just spend the day by himself, even if he was hungry and lonely, because at least then he wouldn’t be here, engaging in a circle of _“Like what’s?”_ as if the two of them didn’t already know exactly what the other was alluding to.

“When you talk about your life like it’s so fucking horrible, and you just accept it. I hate it,” Harry said. Louis’s head throbbed suddenly and made his vision go white. He grabbed the back of his head and hissed, and then the hiss turned into a weak laugh.

“You’re kidding me, right?” he said, and held out a hand, sweeping it towards the entire kitchen, “In case you haven’t noticed—which I’m sure you did, by the way—my life _is_ pretty fucking horrible. But I don’t exactly have a lot of options,”

Harry was silent, and Louis just pushed himself away from the table and stood up, striding towards the living room.

“You know, I thought you coming over and getting me lunch would be nice,” he called out, “But I guess I should’ve known better than that,”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Harry called back. Louis could hear the scrape of chair legs on tile and he turned around just in time to see Harry emerging back into the living room.

“It means that as much as you want to think, we do not live in the same world!” Louis snapped.

His vision blurred and became blotched with angry red and purple dots, and a steady drumbeat pounded at the back of his skull, but it only made him back to keep going. He couldn’t make out Harry’s wide, shocked eyes or his fallen-open mouth, all he could see was his silk shirt the color of a parrot’s feathers and his butter-colored suede boots and his own anger and its needed to be directed at _something_.

“I don’t want this, you know that? I don’t want to fucking—live in this shithole and do this for a living. I want a real life and I want to fucking sleep at night, but I can’t, because some fuckwad messed with my head for two years and now I’m just doing my best to _survive_. So don’t come here and look how shitty my life is and tell me I’m acting helpless, because this is literally all I can do,”

Louis knew, even as he was saying the words, that they were bursting free from the neatly sealed box in the back of his brain, the part of him that felt angry for no good reason, constantly, that he barred away just so he wouldn’t go insane. And now it was tumbling out all at once, smashing everything in sight.

Because he broke things. That’s what he did. He broke things and people and himself because he couldn’t help it, it was too easy and too unavoidable. But he had always refused to break Harry. He wouldn’t. But now he was doing just that.

Harry just stood, right in front of the doorway of the kitchen, perfectly still with miles of carpet and air separating them.

Eventually, he took a breath, “I’m not saying that,”

Louis’s vision blurred and swam with the brightness of Harry’s shirt, drowning out everything else.

“I’m not saying you’re helpless, Louis,” Harry’s said. Louis blinked and his eyes cleared, enough to see that Harry was approaching him, carefully, hands out, face open and impressive, like he was trying to calm a wild animal.

“Louis, breath,” he whispered, and Louis realized his chest felt tight and unmoving.

He still did not breath.

Harry came closer, and his face pinched with concern, his arms reaching out wider.

“Louis, please, just breath. Calm down,”

“Don’t touch me,” Louis got out. He didn’t even know how the words formed through his dry throat and airless lungs, but they did.

“I’m not touching you,” Harry said. His voice was still clam, but it felt forced, trembling just below the surface, “Just breath, please. You’re scaring me,”

The pain in Louis’s head burned white-hot, and his eyes prickled.

Harry had never been scared of him. Not when he broke a handle off the sink in the London house and water sprayed all over the room and into the hallway. Not when he got too drunk and put his fist through the drywall of that motel room in Queens. Not when anyone else would be terrified of what he and his body could do.

But he was scared now.

Louis breathed, only because he would probably pass out if he didn’t, and Harry’s face physically relaxed.

“Okay,” he said, “Now—“

“No,” Louis choked out. Air was back in his body, but it wasn’t calming him. It was only stoking the flames in his belly, making him twist and engulf him, “You’re still _doing_ it. You can’t come here and expect everything to work out for me the way it did for you. I can’t—“

He swallowed, and then he realized he was just gasping, searching for something that wasn’t there.

“ _I can’t have you here_ ,” he managed, and the sound rang in his ears. He had screamed it. Or whispered it, maybe. He really couldn’t tell.

He felt his knees buckle, and then in the next minute, he was on his knees, and then leaning onto his elbows, his face pressed down into the carpet that probably needed washed. But he didn’t care.

And then, just as quickly, a pair of arms were around him, guiding him up, and then he was being pulled into Harry’s crossed lap. His big hands stroked the sides of Louis’s face, and then down to his sides, rubbing circles into Louis’s hip and then moving up to pull his knuckles down his temples.

Louis probably should’ve been angry at him. He had been just a few seconds ago. But he wasn’t, was the thing. He was burnt out, and tired, the box tipped over and emptied and there was nothing left worth saying.

Besides, he couldn’t be mad at Harry. Not for long.

Harry was beautiful and privileged and painfully optimistic and in a lot of ways they really didn’t have much in common anymore, other than the fact they’d both been fucked over, and had each other through it. But really, that was enough. More than enough. It was everything.

“I’m sorry,” Louis whispered, “I’m so sorry,”

“No, it’s alright,” Harry said, “You have nothing to be sorry for,”

“Yes I do,” Louis got out. He curled tighter into Harry, bringing his fists up to the side of his head. That voice slunk back into his head, coiling into the ridges of his brain like a snake.

 _Louis, darling_. _You know I don’t like it when you get upset_. _Are you going to get a hold of yourself or am I going to have to do something about it again?_

“No,” Harry’s voice said. He squeezed Louis’s entire body with his arms, and suddenly it felt that like that single word was loud enough to chase out that voice forever. Or at least for a few minutes.

“You never have to apologize to me,” Harry said, “Do you understand that? _I_ need to apologize to you, if anything,”

Louis didn’t say anything else, so Harry just kept talking.

“I worry about you, yeah. I’m going to worry about you every single day for the rest of my life, because I care about you, and I want you to be okay. But I know sometimes I act like you can’t take care of yourself, and that I know better than you just because I have enough money for some extra locks on my door. But, God, Lou, you can take care of yourself. You take care of yourself better than anyone I know,”

Louis snorted wetly.

“Sure I do,” he said.

“You do,” Harry insisted, “I couldn’t do it, if I were in your place. You’re not still here because of what you’ve been through. It’s who you _are_ , Louis,”

Louis didn’t say anything, partially because he had no idea what to say to that but mostly because he was just _tired_.

Luckily, Harry could talk enough for the two of them.

“Hey,” he said, nudging Louis, “Do you remember the first time you saw my mum hit me?”

Louis flinched at the words. They didn’t talk about this a lot, because single words between them were weighted with so much. Harry said _My mum_. Louis said _Him_. They didn’t say _My mother hit me and starved me and forced me into a career I didn’t even think I wanted when I was barely past puberty_. They didn’t say _I was abused for two years by a sociopath with mind control powers_. It was understood, with just a few words, because spelling it out was too hard.

But Harry was asking, so he should answer.

“Yeah, I do,” he answered. His voice was rough, raw and thick, but it was good enough to form words, so he kept going, “I came in late. You already had a handprint on your face when I ran in,”

“Yeah, I did,” Harry said. He sounded far away when he said it. Even more so when he said, “I was bleeding, too, I think,” the way someone would say “I took the subway downtown that day, I think,”

“You were,” Louis nodded, “She was wearing a ring when she hit you,”

“Oh, right. The really ugly one. With the peridots,”

“Is that what those are called? The yellow-green stones?”

“Mm-hm,” Harry replied. He dragged a finger down Louis’s cheek. He wasn’t wearing any rings now. But Harry didn’t have any ugly rings. Harry had beautiful hands. His hands didn’t deserve to wear ugly rings that cut skin and had jewels in them Louis didn’t know the name of.

Louis’s head was still swimming. That would explain a lot.

“It cut my cheek, and blood got all over the place. Ruined that stupid ring. And my jumper. And the carpet, a little bit,” Harry continued, “And then you came in. Jesus Christ, Lou, when you came—“

He took a deep breath and paused, his finger poised right over Louis’s cheek, his fingernail touching his cheekbone.

“When you came, it was like I blinked and then all the furniture was upside down, cutting the room in half. Her on one side, me on the other. I didn’t even know what happened. And then you were screaming. God, you screamed so loud, it was like thunder,” he chuckled, and his hand moved up, threaded his fingers in Louis’s hair. Louis needed a haircut. Would Harry touch his hair more or less if he got a haircut? This was important, “You remember what you said?”

Louis swallowed and closed his eyes, nudging up into Harry’s touch.

“I remember,” he said.

“Say it, please,” Harry whispered. His voice was soft, but filled with desperation, pleading.

Louis never wanted to deny him a single thing on the entire Earth.

“’Don’t ever touch him again’,” he said, and for a moment he could hear himself, his voice higher and less developed, but loud, his entire body shaking badly, as he screamed.

He _had_ screamed it, then.

He didn’t have the energy to scream now.

He didn’t know if he would ever have the energy or strength or motivation to scream as loudly as he did on that day.

“That’s right,” Harry nodded, “And then she didn’t,”

Louis nodded. He felt like he should smile, but the muscles in his cheek didn’t want to move.

“You know what I decided, right then and there? In a room full of broken furniture with a cut up cheek and blood on my jumper and a superhuman standing right in front of me?”

“What’s that, love?”

“I decided that if there was ever an opportunity I would get to save you, I would. I didn’t have any superpowers, and I didn’t think it would be possible, to save someone as strong as you. But I wanted to try,”

It was quiet, then, just Harry holding Louis is his arms, petting his cheek with his ringless fingers, until Harry’s voice broke through the silence again.

“And then you crawled through my window, Louis,”

His voice was thick, and watery, like ocean waves.

He was crying. Shit.

“You crawled through my window, and you were dirty and scared and so skinny, and you were crying so hard,”

Louis nodded, and swallowed hard.

“It was the first time I’d cried in almost two years,” Louis said, muffling his words into Harry’s thigh, “He didn’t let me cry. Said I looked ugly when I cried, and he didn’t like to deal with me when I was sad, couldn’t find a reason I should be unhappy at all,”

“I know,” Harry said gently, “You told me that. That night,”

“Yeah. I remember now,” Louis said, “I’m just—sometimes I forget things. I’m sorry,”

“It’s alright,” Harry said softly, and then sighed, “I just—I want to help you now. And I want you to let me do that,”

Louis just stared at ahead of him, towards the rest of the living room. It felt wrong, to be sprawled on this dirty carpet in clear view of all his filing cabinets and camera equipment and cheaply built bookshelves, and at the same time to have the silk of Harry’s shirt brushing against the back of his neck and the smell of his cologne buried deep into nostrils and the soft, clumsy draw of his fingers over his temples.

“You—you’re helping now,” Louis eventually said, “I don’t know when I’m going to need this again, but, you’re helping now,”

“Okay,” Harry replied, “That’s good enough for me,”

Harry tugged on his hair a little longer, as Louis breathed in deep, let air settle into his throat and then his lungs, mixed with the stale smell of his apartment and the rich floral spice of Harry’s cologne.

“Louis,” Harry eventually said, and Louis twisted his head enough to look up. Harry glanced down at him and his hair floated over his face. It obscured the sides of his cheeks, but Louis could still see his eyes, and his mouth, pursed in hesitation until he eventually spoke, “I know it’s not my place to be asking you anything. Especially not now, today, here, but…”

Louis rolled his eyes, “Spit it out, Styles, God,”

Harry smiled, and reached a hand up, tucking his hair behind her ear, enough that Louis could see the edge of his curved mouth, the dimple stamped deep in his cheek. And then it faded, slowly, as Harry dipped his hand back down to trace the edge of Louis’s cheek.

“You said…when we went to dinner a while back, you said I wouldn’t have wanted to see you, in the time after you left,” he said, and Louis nodded.

“That—yeah, I did. And I still meant that,”

“Well, I…I thought about that, a lot. That night, after dinner. And a lot since then,”

He was quiet, the pull of his touch over Louis’s back as steady as ever, but the sound of his deep breathing punched through the air, making Louis on edge as he waited for Harry to keep going.

“I just—what happened to you?” Harry asked in a rush, “I want to know. I want to understand,”

Louis didn’t answer right away, just kept looking straight ahead, grasping to the final seconds where his past was his and his alone, in all of its parts, and then eventually pulled himself up, rubbing a hand over one side of his face.

“Okay,” he said, righting himself fully until he was sitting right across from Harry, “I’ll tell you, then,”

“You will?”

“Well, you asked for it, don’t act so surprised,” Louis snorted, and allowed his voice to settle, for the weight of what he was doing to fully register, “So, uh, I guess I should start with…why I left,”

He didn’t like thinking about it, the morning he had left, event though at the time he hadn’t felt much, which was probably why he ended up being able to go through with it.

After the bus crash, in the split seconds that followed, Louis had stayed still. He had stayed on the sidewalk in his too-stiff and too-expensive clothes, staring at the mangled display of metal that lay in the center of the road, not feeling anything at all, just looking. And then he had run, sprinting out of the abandoned neighborhood and into the late-night fray of the city, down sidewalks and alleys and through increasingly more privileged neighborhoods until he arrived at the building he had helped Harry move into nearly a year prior. He had climbed straight to the top, burning with energy and raw nerves and fear, crawled inside and curled up on the living room floor until Harry found him and held him and cleaned the dirt and blood and tears off his skin.

He had stayed there for six months, eating junk food and sleeping as much as he wanted and enjoying the clarity of his own mind without another voice. Harry made plans to help him go back to school, or at least find a new job, when he was ready, of course. And Louis had wanted it.

But one morning Louis had woken up in Harry’s guest room, had looked out the window and suddenly felt the need to leave. It wasn’t a feeling like the needs or urges he felt with Alex—that felt like something else was pulling him to do it, like he was disconnected entirely—but this felt like a pull from inside his own body, to leave immediately and try to go figure things out on his own, with no help at all.

It wasn’t clear why he followed it. Everything was okay, when he had escaped from the sight of the bus wreck and gone to Harry’s place. He had a bed, he had food, and he had Harry. He had a future.

But…maybe it was the fact that it was the first really powerful instinct that was his and his alone that led him to follow it. Whatever the reason, he had packed up as many clothes as he could fit into Harry’s old rucksack, gone out onto the balcony, and jumped. Didn’t even say goodbye.

Well, he _had_ said goodbye. He had snuck into Harry’s room and knelt right next to his bed and whispered it, while Harry was still asleep, and then left.

Sometimes he wished he would’ve waited a little longer for him to wake up.

He tried to piece together from that day as he spoke to Harry, and then eventually finished on a weak note—“Fuck, I don’t know. I really—I wish I could’ve done everything better.”  Harry just rubbed his back.

“It’s okay,” he said softly, “Can you tell me about everything else?”

Louis nodded, “Yeah, yeah, I can,”

The rest of the aftermath was blurry and half-remembered, but he could break it into sections, could connect some logic to it, in the way the beginning just didn’t possess.

“So, uh, right after I left, it didn’t really take long for me to crash,” he began, “I mean, I guess that was to be expected, right? I had no money, no idea what I was going to do, nothing. I couldn’t sell anything he had gotten me, since the apartment had probably already been cleared out, so I tried getting a job. Bartending came up, and it was fine, tips were good, and there were rooms available to rent upstairs, even if most of the rent came out of my paycheck in the beginning.

“I thought I was doing pretty good, all things considered. I mean, I had an income, at least, and somewhere to stay. But I guess I just wasn’t giving myself time to process anything, and I thought I was fine when really I was repressing a lot of shit, and just, God, I lost it.

“Free booze was kind of a perk of the job. It was a smaller place, really laid back, and employees got a complimentary round of whatever wasn’t selling well at the end of the night. Everyone did it, including me. And then…it stopped being everyone, and it started just being me,”

Louis had been rambling continuously up to that point, but he stopped, including a long, thick breath. Harry pulled at the long bits of hair that were starting to curl at the base of Louis’s neck and dragged his fingers down to the very top of his back and then up again, over and over, until Louis found the air in his chest to speak again.

“I had some drinking issues. For, like, a really long time,”

He stopped, his throat closing up just as quickly again, and he coughed weakly.

“I don’t…I don’t know how much I can say about, it really. Just that it was about as bad as you could imagine,”

“You don’t have to talk about it anymore,” Harry whispered, “I don’t want you to tell me if it’s too hard for you,”

“No, I can. At least, some of it,” Louis insisted. He blinked until his vision blurred and then went back into focus as the rest of the details realigned in his brain. The important details, at least.

“So, I mean, I lost that job, and my room upstairs, too, and then I was back to square one but now I had a fucking addiction issue. So I was in and out of a shelter, and scraping by whatever I saved just to get something to drink.

“And then I was in this bar one night, and I had nothing, but I needed a drink, you know? I thought I would die if I didn’t have anything. So I’m fucking begging this bartender who was on the verge of kicking me out, and then this bloke leans over to me and offers to get me a drink, if I’ll just do him a favor.

“I thought he was going to ask me for a fucking blowjob in the bathroom, and I probably would’ve done it, too, but instead he hands me his iPhone and tells me to go down the street to some restaurant and if I see a couple there, I should take a picture and get it back to him. He tells me what they look like, and I just go with it, not even caring why the hell he wants this picture.

“So I get there, and there are these big windows in the front, big enough you can see all the tables, and the couple he had told me about were right in the back. So I crouch behind these garbage cans with a stranger’s iPhone, taking pictures of this random couple, at rock fucking bottom. Then I go back to the bar, give the guy his phone, and then he buys me a rum and coke and tells me that I just caught his brother and his wife together.  She’d been cheating on him for months, and he needed proof, but he needed someone else to get it for him. And I was just…there.

“It was a shot in dark, really, but I started doing this all the time, just going into places, upscale ones, and asking people if they needed anyone they wanted me to catch. And holy shit, a lot of them did. I worked for drinks, mostly, but then they started asking me for more in-depth cases, and they’d pay me with actual cash. One of them bought me a camera, just to help me get better pictures.

“One day I’m going through this local newspaper, and there’s this ad for a law firm that just opened up, and I see Zayn fucking Malik’s face under the contact number. I walked straight into his office that same day, just to see if I could be helpful to him, and after a few weeks of doing freelance and giving him examples, he started paying me in addition to the independent payments, and I started building a client base through him. Got enough money to get an apartment and set up an office there, too, and got my issues under control a few months back, since it was turning away clients if I smelled like rubbing alcohol all the time,”

He stopped again, taking a longer, deeper breath and then blowing out as slowly and surely as he could manage.

“And now here I am,” he finished weakly.

“Here you are,” Harry echoed. His words were soft, but Louis thought he could hear a hint of pride buried in the three words.

It only made him feel worse. Louis crawled forward and buried himself in Harry’s lap again. In the next few seconds, Harry’s hand was back to stroking Louis’s back, up into his hair, and then back down again, but it barely calmed Louis at all. His brain was catching up with him now, skipping right over his meltdown and instead calling up the fresh memories of Harry’s eyes skating over his stained appliances and ruined tile in his apartment.

“I’m sorry you have to be here,” Louis said, and rushed on before Harry could say anything else, “You probably think Zayn isn’t paying me enough. But he is. And I get plenty of independent cases, too. Probably enough to live somewhere else,”

Harry didn’t react, just made a soft noise that could either be agreement or acknowledgement or nothing at all.

“See, the thing is, I kind of have this account,” Louis said, and Harry’s fingers paused on his back for a just a moment before picking up again.

“An account,” Harry repeated.

“Yeah. Like, a savings account. And I put most of my pay in there and leave just enough for my rent and food and maybe a few other things but not really much else,”

“I see,” Harry said slowly, “And…are you going to tell me why you do this?”

“Well, I don’t really know,” Louis admitted, “I just having it there. Like, I could travel somewhere or go back to school or do whatever I wanted with it. It’s just…there if I need it,”

“If you need to run away,” Harry suggested.

“That was always the first plan,” Louis said, and Harry sighed.

“Should’ve known better than to get attached to a flight risk, huh?”

The words were so soft, and gentle, but they stung nonetheless.

Louis pulled himself up so he could look fully at Harry, and shook his head.

“I’m not going to run away. Not now,” he said. When Harry didn’t say anything, he tried again, “I’m _not_. I don’t want to anymore,”

He leaned forward and butted his head weakly against Harry’s shoulder before just collapsing into him and sighing, “I’m staying right here. With you,”

Harry exhaled, slowly, and rubbed Louis’s back. The tip of his nose became squished against Louis’s shoulder as he buried his face into Louis’s neck.

“Hope you find somewhere else, though,” he murmured, “Somewhere with big windows. Somewhere clean. Somewhere where you can be happy,”

“I am happy,” Louis said weakly.

“Are you?” Harry asked, and Louis was split between rolling his eyes and sobbing again.

Instead, he went for a whisper.

“I’m happy when you’re here,” he said, and Harry tugged him even tighter to his chest.

“Then I’ll stay,” he promised. The words soaked pressed right into Louis’s skin and soaked into his bones, echoing as Harry traced a finger over the back of Louis’s hand.

S-T-A-Y.

He wasn’t sure if it was a plea to Louis or a promise, but either way, he could listen. He had to listen.

Eventually, Harry stopped spelling on the back of his arm and Louis sighed into his shoulder, remembering vaguely what day it was.

 “Don’t you have a show to do today?”

Harry just shook his head and leaned in, so his mouth as right by Louis’s ear.

“That’s what prerecorded episodes are for,”

*******

Harry stuck around for the rest of the day, until Louis eventually chased him out at eight, claiming he at least needed to get _some_ work done. But instead he went back to his bedroom as soon as Harry was gone and slept, letting the hours slip away until he awoke to just another day. He made himself a cup of coffee and sat down at his desk, sorting out the work he’d neglected the day before, cleaning up his own mess.

Mental breakdowns are really only hard when you stepped back and looked over everything that was left were left in their wake.

Eventually, he got around to his inbox, overflowing now with two days’ worth of messages. He worked through them steadily, fielding new case requests, sending confirmations and progress reports to ongoing clients and curtly replying to those who had decided to come to him weeks later to bitch about a fee or supposedly inadequate information.

He sorted through the messages slowly, and after he had gotten through the most recent ones, he stopped, preparing to shut his laptop. He wanted to grab his cigarettes and go back to his window, watch the street, return to his normal routine. But instead, the New Mail icon at the top of the screen caught his eye, and his fingers dropped down to the keyboard again.

Before he could figure out another excuse, he opened up the new mail tab and typed out a short message to an address he hadn’t contacted in months, sending it before he could even begin to doubt himself.

_Hey, Leigh Anne._

_It’s been a while, I know. But is there any way we could talk soon?_

_-Louis_

*******

Leigh Anne’s office was a little bit bigger than Louis remembered, but not by much. It was nice and sunny, and had a bookshelf filled with brightly colored self-help books and potted cacti. When Leigh Anne opened the door to let him in she promptly spilled half her tea all over her button-down and mumbled, “Fucking shit, hey, Louis, shit down a sec while I sort this out—ah, fuck, that burns,”

Things were already going better than he had expected.

He sat down on the well-loved couch in the corner of the office, while Leigh Anne took off her ruined top—“You’re still as gay as I am, right? Great,”—and pulled a Sarah Lawrence sweatshirt over her bright pink bra and jeans instead. She grabbed a clipboard from her desk and a bottle of water from the sticker-covered mini-fridge sitting on the floor, and came back over, setting the bottle in front of Louis and moving over to her high-backed floral arm chair. She crossed her legs as she sat, one foot resting on her opposite thigh, as she flipped through the papers on her clipboard. Louis recognized his own handwriting—he had just finished filling out the forms in the lobby twenty minutes ago.

“Well,” Leigh Anne sighed, flipping all the papers back to their rightful place, “Looks like you could still use some help,”

“Yeah,” Louis rubbed his hands together, “I—I guess I underestimated how much the first time around,”

“You weren’t ready,” she shrugged, “But now you are, right?”

“Sure,”

“I’ll take it,” she decided. She tapped her fingers on the clipboard, “You know it’s perfectly okay to be here, right?”

“I guess so. I mean, yeah,”

“No, I’m being serious,” she continued, “Louis, you have a childhood trauma, an arguably isolating physical condition, a history of addiction, and a shit ton of PTSD on your plate. I mean, I would be more worried if you had never come here at all,”

“Do you use the term ‘shit ton of PTSD’ with all your clients?”

“Absolutely not. But since my wife’s law firm is paying for these sessions, I’m letting some things slide,” she titled her head and continued to tap at her clipboard, “Louis. I need you to understand something before we continue this,”

“And what is that?”

“That you’re a survivor. And you have been since you were seventeen. You’re strong—emotionally as well as physically—and I can understand that you want to keep being strong, and that you want to keep on pushing and surviving, but I need you to be weak in here. I need you to be vulnerable, and to know it’s _okay_ to be vulnerable, and to be messed up. Because God, if anyone deserves to have a bad day, it’s you. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to have good days, too,” she leaned forward as she spoke. Her fingers had finally stilled on the clipboard, “Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” Louis admitted, “I mean, most of it sounds like bullshit, but, sure, it makes sense,”

Leigh Anne snorted and flipped over a page on her clipboard, “Let’s get started, okay?”

***********

_You’re coming over today, right? NEED TO SEE YOU!!!!!!!!_

Louis looked down at the message on his screen as he stood in the elevator of Harry’s building. Really, he hadn’t looked away from the text since he had gotten it about an hour prior, and suddenly his plans to get some work done before going over to Harry’s apartment completely dissolved.

There was another man in the elevator, dressed in a three-piece suit and reeking of cologne that was probably bought more for the price tag than anything else—or at least, Louis hoped so. Anyone who thought whatever scent it was actually smelled decent needed serious help. The man kept glancing over at Louis and without even looking up Louis could tell he was glaring at him, probably taking in the mud stains that lined at the base of his boots and the scuffs on the sleeves of his jacket.

“Take a picture, it’ll fucking last longer,” he snapped, and the man just glared at him once more before looking away. The elevator dinged and stopped, and he climbed off on one of the middle floors, leaving a trail of disgusting, expensive cologne in his wake.

A small shred of pride settled in Louis’s stomach at the thought that he was headed to a higher floor, anyways.

When he finally got to the penthouse level, he looked down at his phone the entire time as he walked to Harry’s door, typing out, _You’re not kidnapped or something, are you??_ , before deleting it. He would find out soon enough.

He entered the code he had been given into the keypad and found that all the manual locks were undone—a true rarity for Harry on a normal day, but after Louis kept forgetting his spare set of keys it had become normal.

“Harry?” Louis called as he walked down the front hallway, and glanced, again, at his phone, “Hey, are you okay? This text is freaking me out,”

“In here!” Harry’s voice called back. Louis stopped at the entrance to the second hallway, following the sound of his voice down to the last door in the hall, which was slightly open, light spilling out into the hall.

He pushed the door open, and couldn’t help but sigh in relief. The room was little more than a home gym, complete with a treadmill and a rack of weights that completely lined one wall. Harry was right in the middle of it all, sitting down on the mat-covered floor and working on pulling a pair of bright red boxing gloves off of his hands.

“Oh, good,” Harry said, looking up from where he was fiddling with a Velcro strap along his wrist, “You’re here,”

“Yeah,” Louis said. He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked around the room, “Pretty impressive, ah, set up you’ve got here,”

“Thanks,” Harry replied. He flexed his fingers and then pushed himself to his feet, pulling the elastic out of his hair only to shake it out and pull it back up again.

“So, what was the emergency, exactly? Are we going out or what?” Louis asked, bouncing on his toes. Harry only gave him a look, snapping the elastic into place.

“What,” Harry said, “Take your jacket off, we’re working out,”

Louis laughed. Harry just stared at him steadily, until the laugh died in his throat.

“Oh, you’re serious,”

“Yeah, I am,” Harry said. He lifted both arms straight over his head and then folded one, so his hand was on his opposite shoulder. The edge of his t-shirt rode up as he did, displaying the black ink on his hips. When he dropped his arms, the fabric swooped down to cover it again, “I’m going to teach you how to defend yourself,”

“I think I’m good there, actually,” Louis said, “I mean, you know…the whole super strength thing,”

“Alright then,” Harry shrugged, “Why don’t we spar, then?”

“Like, right here?” Louis asked, pointing to the floor.

“Yeah, why not. If you know what you’re doing, it shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

“I guess not,”

“Perfect. Get over here, then,” Harry said, and then stared straight at Louis’s shoulders, “I told you to take off that jacket,”

Louis sighed and then reached up, pulling the leather off his shoulders and dropping it to the floor.

“And shoes, too,” Harry added. Louis rolled his eyes but followed the instructions, undoing the laces on his boots and pulling them off, along with his socks. After he was done, he wandered over to Harry, standing right in front of him.

“Fight stance,” Harry commanded, and Louis resisted the urge to roll his eyes yet again. Harry repositioned his legs so one was slightly behind him and held up both arms, hands in loose fists. Louis mimicked the gesture.

“So, what, we just—“ Louis began, and didn’t even have a chance to finish before Harry’s leg came up, swiftly kicking him the side. In the next second, he was flat on the mat, panting hard and staring at the ceiling.

“Styles, what the _fuck_ ,” he wheezed, “I wasn’t ready,”

“Alright,” Harry said, and pulled Louis to his feet. His head swam as he righted himself, “Try again, then. I’ll give you a warning this time,”

“How considerate,” Louis spit out, but Harry just shook his head and then cleanly got back into starter position, which Louis mirrored again.

“Now,” Harry breathed out, and Louis was ready, landing a punch to Harry’s shoulder with a fraction of his usual strength but probably still enough to hurt.

And then Harry was grabbing his wrist and flipping Louis’s entire body around, and in the next moment he was back on the mat.

“You cheated,” Louis huffed, and Harry laughed, coming into view over him.

“I didn’t. You just made a beginner’s mistake. A punch to the shoulder makes it too easy for your opponent to retaliate,” Harry explained, rubbing his shoulder, “Although I will say, that was a pretty impressive punch. I’ll be feeling that for a few hours,”

“I’ll be feeling your fucking _betrayal_ for the rest of my life,” Louis spit back, but Harry just laughed again and hoisted him back to his feet.

“Want to try again?”

“Hell yeah I do,” Louis immediately said, jumping back into starting position before Harry could even make his way back across the mat, “Come at me, Styles,”

Harry sighed and gave him a good-natured smile before getting right back into fighting stance.

Harry brought him down with another kick to the side before Louis could even think about what he wanted to do. And then the next time Louis actually managed a kick, but all Harry had to do was grab his ankle and pull a bit and Louis was swiftly knocked off his feet. Although that still didn’t beat when Louis decided that just running straight at Harry and jumping him was the best course of action, and before he knew it Harry was bringing up his leg and flipping Louis cleanly over his knee and back to the mat.

Louis was getting tired of that fucking mat.

“You know, this really isn’t fair,” Louis huffed as he rolled onto his back, “You’re four inches taller than am I, at least. Probably heavier, too,” 

“Weren’t the one saying you could easily beat me anyways a while back?” Harry asked mildly. He was standing right over Louis now, his feet caging in Louis’s hips on both sides. Louis glared at him, briefly entertaining the idea of grabbing his ankle and bringing him toppling down with him.

“Well, you’re also wearing fucking tights, and I’m in skinnies,” Louis tried.

“Did your jeans make you think attempting to jump me was a good idea?” Harry shot back, a slow smile creeping over his lips. Louis wanted to smack it off. Maybe do something else, too.

“It’s not fair!” Louis spit out at last, “I—I’m stronger than you, damn it!”

“It has nothing to do with strength, and everything to do with speed and accuracy,” Harry said calmly, holding out a hand, “Come on, get up,”

“I am not doing that again,”

“We’re not. I just want you to get up so we can get something to eat,”

“Fine,” Louis groaned but took Harry’s hand, letting him pull him cleanly onto his feet, which made him groan even more.

“Seriously? Do you have to pull me up like that _every time_?”

“What? You have powers, but like you said, you’re not exactly heavy,” Harry shrugged. Louis punched him weakly in the shoulder and then wandered over to the nearest wall, leaning into it and reaching up to rub his sore side.

“I’ll go get you some ice,” Harry offered, but Louis waved him off.

“Superhuman healing should be kicking in soon enough,” he said, and then winced as he hit an especially sore spot, “Ah, shit—what have you even been _doing_ , anyways?”

“A few things. I started with karate, and then tae known doe. But krav maga’s my favorite. Rather intense,”

“Jesus Christ, I don’t even know what this is,” Louis huffed, “And do you not have a sparring buddy? Is that why you just kicked my ass?”

“No, my trainer comes on Friday afternoons, usually, and I do a bit with him. And then I just use my punching bag the rest of the time,” he said, “I just…I thought that knowing this stuff would make you feel a little safer,”

“Is that why you’re doing this? Locks and cameras weren’t enough?” Louis asked. He said as more of a joke, but when he looked over and saw the look on Harry’s face his stomach sank, “Oh, shit, that _is_ why you’re doing this,”

“I just—“ Harry rubbed the back of his head, “When I didn’t have you anymore, I kind lost my back-up plan, didn’t I? No one to fight the bad guys for me,”

Louis just stared and Harry stared back, eventually dropping his hand, “I wanted to be able to protect myself, and to feel safe, but just in my own home but in my own body. Surely you can understand that,”

“I—“ Louis started, and then looked down at the floor. There were crumpled indents in the rubbers mats where he had kept hitting the floor, “I guess I never thought that was possible for me,”

“Fair enough,” Harry sighed, and Louis looked up to see him rubbing his face, “I just thought I’d show you, is all. It’s okay if you don’t want to do it,”

As he pulled his hands away from his face, Louis couldn’t help but feel his stomach twist. For a brief moment, Harry’s face had settled into a pursed mouth and pinched eyebrows, resigned exhaustion and unchecked disappointment. When he saw Louis looking, though, he quickly schooled his face back into a smile.

“Come on, let’s go out, then,” he said as he walked towards the door, “Do you still want to get something to eat?”

He barely had even finished his question, though, when Louis grabbed his arm, inserting just enough strength into his touch to hold Harry back.

“Hey,” he said, “I want to do it again,”

Harry frowned, looked down at his arm and then back up again, “Louis, I don’t—you don’t have to do that,”

“No, no, I want to learn. I want you to teach me,” he insisted, pulling on Harry’s arm, “Like, we won’t fight. But you can show me the basics, I can learn some stuff for myself,”

Harry gave him a long look, and then dropped his gaze.

“I’m not really an expert,” he muttered, all of his previous gusto and confidence suddenly gone.

“Didn’t I just say the basics?” Louis said. When Harry didn’t look back up, he just sighed and grabbed hold of both of Harry’s shoulders, shaking him a bit until he glanced up.

“Okay, here’s what going to fucking happen, Styles,” he said, “You’re going to show me how to do this, and then I’m going to get it down, and then I’m going to kick your ass, and then you’re going to take me out to a very expensive dinner for my trouble,”

Harry just blinked at him, and then a slow smile formed, a bright, hopeful light sparking behind his eyes.

“Alright,” he said, “Let’s do it, then,”

“Perfect,” Louis straightened up and walked to the middle of the room, already jumping into the starting position. Harry just shook his head and walked over to join in, his steps unbearably slow.

“I’m going to win, just so you know,” Louis said, and Harry just got into beginning position and shook his head.

“Let’s see if you can follow my instructions first,”

*******

Louis did not win. Harry talked him through some basic punches and one kick, and then preceded to pin Louis to the mat in about the same amount of time it had taken him previously. Louis had accused him of cheating and purposely sabotaging him with bad instructions before eventually forfeiting and letting Harry peel him off the mat and take them both to dinner.

They went to some hipster burger restaurant near Harry’s building that sold their sandwiches and chips on china platters and their milkshakes in cocktail tumblers for absolutely no reason, and they sat by the wide, fingerprint-smudged window that looked out onto the street as they ate.

“I’m gonna be sore for the next fucking week,” Louis mumbled in between bites of his burger. It had cheese with a French name he had never heard of and tomatoes from some urban gardening project in Queens and cost half as much as his electric bill but he couldn’t find the energy to care.

Harry laughed and took a sip from his organic-gelato milkshake, “Louis, you have literal super strength,”

“Well, maybe you fucking broke it. How does that make you feel? You literally broke me,”

“You’re fine, Louis,”

“You don’t _know_ that,”

“I wouldn’t have hit you as hard as I did if I didn’t know you would be able to take it. Now be quiet and eat your burger,”

Louis rolled his eyes and ate another bite of his organic-farm-raised-urban-garden-supporting burger. When he swallowed he picked at one of the napkins next to his plate and stared pointedly down at his hands as he wiped a solitary spot of ketchup off his thumb.

“You know, I started seeing someone,” Louis said, and eventually looked up when the ketchup was completing gone. Harry was quiet as he finishing chewing, then looked over with raised eyebrows.

“Did you?” he asked, and his voice suddenly made Louis realize he probably should’ve used some different wording.  

“No, not like that,” Louis managed, “Like, a therapist someone. For therapy…things,”

“Oh,” Harry said, and then a firmer, “ _Oh_ ,”

“Yeah,” Louis shrugged and picked up his burger, turning it between his hands as he watched a lone slice of tomato fall out of the back of the bun, “I thought it would be good to talk to someone, you know? Probably should have done that earlier, but, I’m getting around to it,”

“No, Louis, that’s fantastic,” Harry insisted, “I’m glad you’re doing that,”

“Yeah, me, too,” Louis admitted. He licked at his thumb, tasting the overly acidic ketchup that had rubbed off there, “You ever do anything like that?”

“Go to therapy? Yeah, I do. Not as often as I should, but, once every two weeks. Sometimes we talk, sometimes we just meditate, depending on how I’m feeling. But it’s nice,”

“Meditate,” Louis repeated, “Does that shit actually work or is that you being more pretentious than me again?”

“ _Hey_ ,” Harry laughed, “Of course it works! It’s a centuries-old practice!”

“Uh-huh,”

“You should try it sometime,”

“I don’t know,” Louis sighed. He reached for his cocktail-tumbler milkshake and took a sip through the bright green straw, staring out onto the street. A cluster of women wandered by in simple yet painfully expensive looking dresses, and a moment later a couple who kept looking upwards, clearly tourists, passed by. An ordinary night, by all means, and for once he felt part of it.

“I have too much in my head,” he said, “I don’t how well I’d deal with being alone with my own thoughts,”

“Maybe later, then,” Harry suggested, and Louis nodded, sipping up more of his milkshake.

“Maybe,” he allowed. He sent his tumbler down and stared at the half-finished meal on his plate, and then over at Harry. He had barely changed to go out and was still wearing his work-out leggings and had his hair tied up. The only difference was that he had thrown a raspberry red hoodie over his sweat-stained t-shirt.

“Have I told you that you look ridiculous right now?” Louis asked.

Harry shot him a look, scrunching up his nose. He crumpled up his napkin and chucked it at Louis’s head, but it just sailed easily over his shoulder and onto the floor.

“Is that the best you can do?” Louis laughed. In retaliation, Harry threw a chip at his face. It hit Louis’s nose as he was still laughing and then fell to the ground. Louis realized too late it had been covered in ketchup.

“Jesus Christ, you’re such a prick,” Louis huffed, but then he was biting back a smile, because Harry was laughing.

Harry had a really weird fucking laugh. Not the laugh he used to lighten the mood on his show or in interviews or even in the days of _Maple Manor_. That laugh was just a wordless extension of his regular voice, deep and cheery and made to both put people at ease and them people fall at Harry’s feet. His real laugh sounded like he was being tortured, an endless shriek that went up and down but never paused. Louis fucking loved it.

The rest of the patrons didn’t seem to share his sentiment. Manhattan’s wealthy-yet-eclectic crowd kept looking up from their veggies burgers and ethically raised grilled cheese sandwiches and glaring at the two of them, Harry because he was on the screeching like a dying animal and Louis because he was letting it happen, all with ketchup smeared all over his face. Louis felt his own chest grow tight with laughter dying to get out, and then he was laughing too, reaching up to cover his face, which of course only spread ketchup all over his face and hands and made them both laugh harder while the glares became more and more aggressive.

And then, out of nowhere, Louis felt that familiar catch in his chest coupled with nerves bubbling in his stomach, the same thing he had felt in that fort in Harry’s living room and then again with his head in Harry’s lap as he felt like his life was unraveling.

It didn’t leave this time, though. It stayed, and it grew, until it was pushing its way into every edge of Louis’s body.

It stayed after Harry took one last, shuddering breath, and waved easily to the rest of restaurant with a wide smile and an apology that made everyone huff but still smile, just the smallest bit, because for most people falling under Harry Styles’s spell was easier than breathing.

It lingered after Harry wiped a hand under his watering-with-joy eyes and then reached for a clean napkin and helped Louis clean the ketchup off his nose and cheeks and fingers, mumbling apologies that Louis easily deflected because he couldn’t stay mad when Harry’s giant hands were trying so hard to be careful. It lodged itself right in Louis’s ribcage when Harry grabbed his hand and pulled him off the stool, towards the door.

“Let’s go home,”

“Home?” Louis echoed.

“Yeah, you’re staying with me tonight, right?”

“I—I wasn’t aware of that plan,”

“Well, now you are. Come on,”

And then he was being pulled onto the streets of the Upper East Side, and the summer heat was thick and rich with potential for both adventure and danger, and he was holding hands with his best friend with a strange and yet all-too-understandable feeling lodged in his chest.

And that’s when Louis realized he had finally fucked up.

*******

Here was what Louis had learned about fucking up.

It didn’t matter who you were. It did not matter how careful you were or how much you had to lose. It would happen. And it would happen in the one place you never expected it to happen.

These were the things that his job relied on. He had lost track of the times he had recited it to skeptical potential clients or to himself when he was sitting on a rooftop or in the middle of a cluster of bushes, no decent compromising photo in sight after weeks of investigation.

Yet for whatever reason, he never really thought it would happen to him. Maybe it was because he built his career on other people fucking up and that somehow prevented him from doing the same. Maybe he just hadn’t bothered listening to his own advice. Either way, though, he had managed to fuck up the second he developed a crush on his best friend.

The last time Louis had felt anything even slightly resembling romantic with Harry had been when he was eighteen and Harry was sixteen. It had been a rough summer that year, mostly because Harry had officially come out to his mother and they were both dealing with the aftermath. There had been a girl involved, an up and coming teenage actress who was being contracted to appear on the upcoming season of _Maple Manor_ , and she became the next logical choice to be Harry’s new girlfriend.

Louis spent that fall biting down logical arguments that a sixteen-year-old’s love life was really no one’s damn business, and also shoving down the urge to push Harry into a wall and kiss him every time he looked at him with wide eyes and said something as heart-breakingly simple as, “Was it this hard for you?”

He wrote it off as a tense few months and unsettled teenage hormones, and from there they were friends, nothing more, same as always, just without Louis’s problematic feelings bubbling to the surface. Now, though, he was right back to where he was started all those years ago.

The difference, of course, was that Harry was taller, and broader, and didn’t walk around with trembling hands and wide eyes. He didn’t duck behind Louis for protection anymore. Instead he spent every Sunday afternoon, and sometimes weekday evenings, too, tucked against Louis’s back as he positioned his arms and tapped his hands against Louis’s thighs, getting him to move into the correct places. He did everything the way he had normally done it, treating Louis with all the physical and emotional closeness they had built up and grown to rely on.

It made Louis want to lose his mind.

Because now, slipped in between his normal Harry feelings—the pride and familiarity and comfort that settled deep into his bones every time he was around him—there was something else, something hotter weaving its way through the empty spaces of his body, deep into his being. When Harry gripped his arms there was a tightness that overtook Louis’s stomach as he processed the tightness of Harry’s grip, the feeling of sweat sticking to his t-shirt as he leaned back against him. When they sat on the carpet of the living room after sessions, and Harry bit into a piece of caprese toast, Louis’s brain went slow with the desire to lean forward, to lick the olive oil after his hands and taste the basil on his mouth. And then it would fizzle away when Harry looked at him, just enough to stay hidden, but always lurking.

He wanted to write it off as meaningless. Leftover feelings of sharing too much, some delayed result of being reunited with the boy—the man, really—he had known for so long and missed more than he cared to admit. But summer raged on, its heat eventually shifting from hot and dry and merciless to a boiling, humid blanket. Louis went to the apartment and traded weak sparring efforts week after week, and still, the tightness and heat and dizziness in his body did not go away.

Louis wanted Harry back in his life. He even wanted the possibility of another relationship with someone, a real relationship, a chance of a future and moving past the strange in-between he was shuffling through now. He just hadn’t planned on the two thoughts combining in his mind. And now that they had made themselves known, they didn’t want to leave.

The thoughts stayed and lingered in him, hot and unwelcome and yet unrelenting, even now, back in the workout room, as his body hit the mat again. The sensation had become familiar, the dull smack of his body on the sweat-slick rubber, the ache that spread sluggishly through his enhanced body, the eventual creep of Harry’s shadow coming over him before offering an arm, a hand, a way back up.

“You alright?” Harry asked as he pulled Louis back up, “You seem off today,”

Louis blinked and dragged an arm over his eyes. Sweat bit against his eyelashes and he blinked harder.

“M’fine,” Louis mumbled, “Just need water,”

“Why didn’t you say so? Here,”

In the next moment, an icy bottle was being nudged against Louis’s hand and he looked at it, at the black plastic and the white logo on the side with _The Styles Hour_ written in large, sloping font, the giant hand that was clutching it, holding it out to him.

He didn’t look up further, at the way a pair of deep ovals of sweat made Harry’s grey vest cling to his chest and stomach, or the way his eyes looked celery-green under the unforgiving lights or the room. He didn’t even allow his eyes to catch onto the finer details, the faint bands of pale skin that wrapped over Harry’s knuckles where his rings normally were or the one too-short-to-tie-back piece of hair that always came loose and plastered itself to Harry’s temple half-way through a session.

Instead he grabbed the bottle and chugged, the coldness of the water making his teeth smart but doing nothing to quell the burning in his cheeks and the twisting his stomach as his eyes fell on the length of Harry’s shoulders, the way their broadness spilled out of the thin straps of his vest.

_Damn it._

Louis pulled his mouth away from the bottle, roughly wiped his mouth, and set it aside, putting his fists back up.

“Any fucking day I’m gonna kick your ass, Styles,” he muttered as Harry took his usual position across from him.

“Of course you are,” he sighed.

Louis tried to land a punch straight to Harry’s too-broad, inked shoulder, but the other man grabbed his hand, twisted slightly, and leaned forward, and then Louis’s feet slipped out from under him and he was crashing straight back to the mat.

“Remember what I told you about keeping your feet grounded,” Harry said above him.

“Fuck off,” Louis huffed.

Harry laughed, soft and deep, above him. Louis shoved his forehead to the slick mat.

This was not going away.

******

“Do you think it’s possible to fall in love again?” Louis asked, “After everything I’ve been through?”

He raised his hand in time to catch a blue foam ball Leigh Anne had lobbed at his head, and held it against his chest as she sighed heavily.

“You and your fucking superhuman reflexes,” she said, “Have you ever considered trying out for the Yankees or something? Or is it against the rules to have British people involved in the great American past time?”

“Did you hear my question?”

“I did. I’m just thinking,” she replied, and then, more gently, “I’m not really sure you’ll like my answer,”

“Just tell me,” Louis sighed. He closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the arm of the couch. Leigh Anne didn’t require him to lay down when they talked, but he found it helped sometimes.

“Well, I think it depends,” she explained, “Some abuse victims go on to have healthy, fulfilling relationships. Others avoid intimate relationships entirely out of fear. Some use sex as a coping mechanism but never open themselves up to anything deeper,”

“I don’t…I don’t think I’m the last one,” he said slowly, rolling the ball between his palms, “I never really wanted to hook up with anyone, go out after everything that happened. Not because I was scared, but I just…didn’t care. It wasn’t interesting to me anymore. Being intimate with someone,”

“Is it interesting to you now?” Leigh Anne continued, “I assume you’re asking me because you would like to pursue a relationship,”

“Maybe,” he admitted, “I don’t know, to be honest. Because I don’t think I’d be the first option, either,”

“Do you want to tell me why you think that?” Leigh Anne asked.

“I have a feeling I’m going to have to,”

“Smart boy,” Leigh Anne nodded. She picked up her clipboard and pen and held them over her crossed legs, “Go on, then,”

“Well,” Louis huffed, and then closed his eyes, wincing.

“Take your time,” Leigh Anne’s voice said. Louis squeezed the ball between his fingers, feeling the foam contract between his fingers as he did so. Finally, he opened his eyes and just let himself talk.

“Like, it’s not that I don’t trust people, because I know that he… _Alex_ was an isolated case or whatever, but…we had a relationship. We went out to dinner, we went on vacations, we lived together, we were…we were intimate. But I didn’t want any of it, and now all of those milestones feel so tainted, so stripped of everything important that they’re supposed to have,” he began. He pumped the ball steadily in his hands as he spoke, “And it’s not even that. It’s like…I don’t know if I could give someone what they need, because I have too much of my own shit. I don’t think someone else…they don’t deserve someone like me,”

He took a deep breath, pressing the ball right against the base of his throat until it hurt, just a little bit, and then he pulled it away and looked at Leigh Anne. She was just watching him from her big chair, her chin cradled in her palm.

“Louis,” she said slowly, “If you don’t mind my asking, are you talking about a hypothetical relationship, or someone specific?”

Louis licked his lips, letting green eyes and brown hair lit gold by lamplight and the feeling of sweaty skin on skin fill his thoughts, and then dissolve just as quickly.

He swallowed, “Hypothetical,”

Leigh Anne just looked at him steadily, like she didn’t believe him at all, but spoke like she did.

“Here’s the thing, Louis. First, before anything, you need to focus on yourself, and getting better, not for anybody else but for _you_. But at the same time, you can’t use your past to lock yourself out of your own future, or use your recovery as an excuse to not live a life you want to have. And that includes telling yourself you’re never going to be able to love anyone again,”

Louis tossed the ball into the air, watched it grow smaller and then swell again in size as it came closer to him, and then he reached up and grabbed at it, holding it firm in his grasp once again.

“So you’re saying it’s possible,” he said. He turned over onto his side and tossed the ball towards Leigh Anne. Her head snapped up and her dropped her pen, reaching up in attempt to catch it, but fumbled enough for it to fall onto the carpet next to her chair.

“Yes, I’m saying it’s possible,” she sighed as she leaned over to pick up the ball, “It just takes some work, like anything else in recovery,”

“Okay,” Louis said. He stared firmly up at the ceiling, arms crossed over his chest, “I—thanks,”

“You don’t sound convinced,”

“I’m going to have to think about it,”

“Or talk about it,” Leigh Anne suggested

“You’re going to make me talk about this more, aren’t you?”

“You’re in therapy, that’s how this works,” Leigh Anne said, “But, look, I think talking through your past experiences is only to going to help you move forward,”

“Fair enough,” Louis sighed. He uncrossed his arms and reached a hand up just in time for the ball to fall cleanly into his palm.

“Jesus, how do you _do_ that?” Leigh Anne huffed.

“Super powers,” Louis shrugged and tossed the ball limply back in Leigh Anne’s direction, although all it did was fall and roll across the carpet. Leigh Anne sighed, softly, and then flipped over a paper on her clipboard. Louis heard her pen click open again and knew that a new question was waiting, prompting him to rifle through his memories and dig up every emotion from the last four years and beyond he hadn’t mustered up the strength to think about.

Somehow, though, under the pale lights of the room and with Leigh Anne’s gentle voice in the distance, he found the ability to bear it, digging bit by bit, tearing up his memories like rotting floorboards in a warehouse he no longer needed to visit.

*******

Luckily—or perhaps unluckily, really—for Louis and his increasing internal crisis, Harry got extremely busy for a few weeks in August. He had his usual schedule of shows and all the planning and meetings that came with it, but he also had a burst of end-of-summer fundraisers for various charities run by _The Styles Hour’s_ biggest donors and a few guest-speaking gigs for Columbia’s incoming round of journalism students on his plate as well. Their sparring sessions got put on the back burner, as did some of their Sunday dates. Harry texted him nearly every day with apologies and updates on how boring his extra work gigs were, but really, Louis had space to deal with his feelings.

On the down side, his feelings were not going away, and now that Harry was tied up, he was increasingly bored. Which is how he ended up doing increasingly useless things, like dedicating an entire day to reorganizing a year’s worth files.

“Niall, can you do me a favor and text me the next time you have an overwhelming peanut butter craving?” Louis asked. He hadn’t looked up from the mess of papers spread all over his living room floor for the last hour, but five minutes ago there had been the swing of his door opening, followed by the pad of bare feet, and the overwhelming smell of cheaply processed peanuts coming from the direction of the kitchen entrance.

“Can’t,” Niall’s voice mumbled above him, his mouth probably thick with peanut butter, “My phone’s dead and I lost the charger,”

“When did you lose it, exactly?”

“Three months ago,”

Louis sighed and moved the file in his hands to the SOLVED; LONG STANDING CLIENT pile, “Of course you did,”

“What are you doing, anyways?”

“Recognizing my files,” Louis explained, sorting through the next pile of papers in his lap. He wasn’t sure if he should put it into SOLVED; ONE-TIME CLIENT or IN PROGRESS. Was it technically in progress if he hadn’t cashed the paycheck yet?

“Your place is a mess,”

“Well spotted. And it’s probably better than yours has ever looked,”

“True,” Niall agreed. Louis just huffed again and then, Niall was at his side, sitting next to him as he ate peanut butter with a large spoon that was probably supposed to be used to stir industrial-sized bowls of cake batter.

“Can I help at all?”

“No, you just sit there and look pretty, darling,” Louis sighed, and reached over to ruffle Niall’s hair. He just snorted and then preceded to choke on his peanut butter as Louis went back to his work, not interrupting him with anything else.

Niall hadn’t brought up the late-night breakdown since it had happened. While Louis spent a decent amount of time wondering if it would ever come up again, he was also strangely glad he didn’t have to discuss it again outside of his afternoons in Leigh Anne’s office.

Sometimes he needed to talk and process, and sometimes he needed to talk and then go back to being a glorified vending machine. 

He worked for a little while longer, polishing off an entire pile of old files, and was just pulling a fresh, unorganized stack onto his lap when his phone went off. He grasped behind him until he found it and then pulled it in front of him, expecting yet another middle-of-the-day text from Harry, bringing both an anecdote and a fresh wave of the newfound feelings Louis hadn’t even begun to sort out.

Instead, he found Zayn’s name over top of a short message.

_Hey, we should hang out some time. Get dinner or something._

He frowned down at his screen, holding it close to his face and then holding it at arms-length. He held the phone out to Niall.

“Niall, what does this say?”

“It looks like some guy is hitting you up,” Niall said, scooping more peanut butter off the sides of the jar.

“No, he’s—he’s a friend,”

“Sure he is,”

“Shut up, he’s my boss,”

“Damn, Lou, good for you,”

“You’re impossible,” Louis huffed, and then went back to his phone to type out a reply.

**_…..Malik what the fuck? Are you sick? Are you, like, on your deathbed and righting wrongs or some shit? Is ‘get dinner or something’ code for ‘I’ve been kidnapped call the FBI?’_ **

The reply came back almost immediately, in a two parts.

_No, you prick. I just want to hang out. I’m not TECHNICALLY your boss so I think that’s allowed._

_So what do you say? Friday night?_

Louis considered lying and saying he had someone to stalk that night, but then remembered all his clients were also Zayn’s clients, and that meant he knew at least part of his schedule.

He typed slowly, and then went ahead and sent his reply.

**_I guess._ **

_Wow, excited to see you, too._

_I’ll send you the place and time, then?_

**_Well that would make sense, wouldn’t it._ **

_You’re impossible. I’ll see you Friday._

Louis just stared at his phone after he sent the texts, and then put it back down on the floor as he turned his attention back to his files.

“Well, Niall, I have plans for Friday,”

“You have a date? Good for you,”

“No, it’s not—you know what, sure, I have a date,”

“Good for you,” Niall repeated and then stood up, his legs swaying slightly, “Do you have any bread? I’m getting bread,”

*******

The address Zayn sent to Louis on Friday afternoon led him half-way across the island of Manhattan, to a brick-lined building in the very center of Harlem. Louis made his way down the surprisingly sluggish sidewalk until he got to the corner, and wandered down the stone steps that led to the below-ground entrance before sliding inside the bar. It wasn’t anything special: a large, probably sticky and cracked bar in the center of the large room, surrounded on all sides by clusters of chairs and tables, the entire space filled with yellow-colored light and smelling faintly like booze, smoke, and grease.

Louis readjusted his beanie and tucked his hands into his pockets, glancing all around the room.

“Louis!”

He looked around and caught sight of Zayn in the back of the room, rapidly coming closer to him. Louis blinked as he approached, barely recognizing him outside of his three-piece suits and impeccably clean office. Instead, the man approaching him with his easy smile and skinny jeans looked like any other guy in his late twenties, exactly the kind of person that would come to a place like this.

Before Louis could process it, Zayn was on him, caging him into a tight hug as he slapped his back repeatedly. The sickly sweet smell of marijuana made Louis cough as he did.

“Glad you could come!” Zayn said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Louis coughed out, pulling away from the hug, “You reek of weed, mate. Wait, are you _high_?”

“Maybe just a little bit!” Zayn laughed, running a hand through his hair. A flash of something metallic on his earlobe caught Louis’s attention.

“Are those earrings?” he asked blankly, and Zayn nodded, tugging on his earlobe.

“Yeah, I got them pierced in law school. Surprised they’re still holding up, to be honest. Girl in my apartment building it with a sewing needle and an apple,”

“Who the fuck _are_ you?” Louis asked, which only made Zayn laugh more and throw an arm over his shoulder, “Come on, we got a booth in the back,”

“We?” Louis echoed, but just as he said it, they were rounding the corner, and he saw Liam sitting in one of the cheap black leather-lined booths, drinking an extremely flat beer. He put down his drink and waved when he saw them.

“Hi, Louis,” he greeted as Zayn slid into the booth, bumped against Liam’s side and immediately wrapped both arms around Liam’s chest, burying his head into his shoulder.

“Uh, hey, Liam,” Louis returned, sliding into the free space next to Zayn in the booth, “I think your drink’s gone a little flat,”

“Oh, it’s apple juice,” Liam said, picking up his drink and shrugging, “Z told me you don’t drink, so, uh, I thought I shouldn’t, either,”

Louis wasn’t sure if he was more taken back by Liam referring to Zayn with a nickname or the fact he’d actually gone out of his way to not only remember something like that about Louis, but to do something about it.

“That’s—thanks,” he got out, and Liam just shrugged again.

“Yeah, it’s alright,”

“Isn’t he sweet? He is, isn’t he. You’re sweet,” Zayn cut in, and kissed Liam on the cheek. Liam smiled at him gently as Zayn pried himself off his boyfriends chest and held up a hand, waving at a nearby waiter, “Hey, can we get a couple Sprites over here? And some mozzarella sticks?”

The server caught his eye an nodded, and as soon as he was gone Zayn pulled out a baggie of weed and a pack of rolling papers out of his jacket and began rolling a joint out on the table.

“Are you even allowed to do that in here?” Louis asked, and Zayn just shot him a look.

“Yeah, I think Perrie helped the owner of this place sue his landlord while she was still at Harvard,” Zayn said as he finished the joint off.

Louis just watched blankly as he pulled out a lighter, held the tip of the joint in the flame, and lit it before taking a pull.

“I feel like I should have hung out with you guys earlier,” Louis managed.

“Yeah, we’re a fucking delight,” Zayn said, and held out the joint, blowing a long stream of smoke from his lips, “Want a hit?”

“You know what, why the hell not,” Louis sighed, and took it from him.

He took one quick hit, letting the smoke settle deep his throat, and then blew it out slowly, blinking his eyes against the cloud that hung in front of him. The joint got plucked from his fingers, and then Zayn was offering it to Liam.

It went around a few more times until the paper burned down low enough to be unusable, and then Zayn started on another one, which Louis waved off. He felt _good_. Pleasantly light, the room just blurry enough to make him relaxed but still solid enough to make him feel like he could catch a train home if he wanted to.

At some point, Zayn and Liam had become tangled in each other, with Zayn leaning his head back against Liam’s chest as he blew out the last of the smoke from his unusably burnt joint. He extinguished it against the metal rim of the table and then yawned, stretching his body upwards.

“I’m gonna go for a wee,” Zayn murmured against Liam’s shoulder, “Be right back,”

Liam pet Zayn’s hair absent-mindedly, and then pressed a kiss to his temple just as Zayn began slipping away from him. Louis pulled his knees to his chest as Zayn tumbled past him, eventually managing to pull his way out of the booth.

Louis rested his head back against the sticky booth after he left, content to sit in his own haziness, but his attention was quickly diverted by Liam’s voice.

“I’m glad you came out with us tonight,” Liam said, “It’s nice to actually…get to know you,”

“Yeah,” Louis agreed, yawning a bit, “Me too,”

Liam smiled, and then looked around the room before leaning in closer to him.

“You know, I didn’t know how to bring this up, but…I really admire you. For everything,”

“Everything?” Louis parroted, and Liam just nodded, blushing a bit.

“I—I mean, Zayn told me a little bit, about…your powers and stuff. And about everything that happened to you because of it,”

“Oh,” he said, and the room suddenly felt a lot less blurry. He wasn’t mad, necessarily—he had only told Zayn the barren details about Alex, anyways, and his powers weren’t as much of a secret as he would’ve liked to think. But there was something about the fact that someone else outside of Louis’s pre-approved circle knew about him, that it wasn’t just a secret he kept tucked tightly to his chest, that made him feel vulnerable. Not indestructible, for once.

“I—I’m sorry,” Liam rushed out, “I know that probably stepped over a huge line—“

“No, no, it’s fine,” Louis said, “I’m trying to get over that shit anyways, you know? Should probably be open with it,”

Liam nodded, slowly, the way someone would when they didn’t perfectly understand but were trying very, very hard to do so, and then he cleared his throat.

“I, uh, you know—my sister is actually like you. She has powers, I mean,”

“Oh,” Louis said again.

“Yeah. They’re genetic, though. Uh, telekinesis is the right word, I think? It was really tough, especially when she was a kid. Hard for her to control and everything,”

“I can imagine,” Louis said. It was hard enough dealing with his own strength when he was a teenager. He didn’t want to think about what it would have been like to have to cope with being a little less than human when he was still in primary.

“So…I know I can’t understand what it’s like, but…I’m not scared of people like you, is what I’m trying to say. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you,” Liam fumbled, “Uh, shit, I don’t think I’m saying this right,”

“No, it’s okay,” Louis assured, “I—thanks, I guess,”

“Did you ever think about, um, helping people with your powers or anything?” Liam asked, “Sorry, that’s a dumb question,”

“It’s not. But becoming a superhero?” Louis snorted, “Nah, mate. I tried, once, a really long time ago. Wasn’t exactly for me. I always wanted to help people in a different way,”

“Really,” Liam said, “How?”

Louis licked his lips, leaning back into his seat. The cheap leather felt sticky against his neck.

“I wanted to be a teacher,” he said, “I mean, before everything, that’s…that’s what I was, I guess. I only taught for a year, but, yeah,”

“Wow,” Liam said, “Do you think you’ll ever do that again?”

“Maybe,” Louis murmured. He blinked and the colors in front of him blurred, dark brown and black and yellow, “Maybe,”

There was a moment of thick, humid, silence, and then it was broken by Zayn bouncing back to them, practically crawling over Louis’s legs to return to his seat.

“Hey, I’m back,” he panted, “Line was long as shit,”

“Sure it was,” Louis sighed, taking in the glassy sheen to Zayn’s eyes and the fresh smell of sweet smoke that clung to his shirt. Liam smiled at him, gently, and touched his shoulder.

“Hey,” he said, and Zayn giggled and echoed, “Hey,” before leaning in to kiss Liam fully on the mouth. Louis adverted his eyes and took a long drink of his Sprite.

“You know what,” Zayn said after he had pulled himself off of Liam, his lips swollen and red, “I have an idea,”

“Do tell,” Louis said flatly.

“Let’s get some shots!” he shouted, holding up a hand, “Someone, get me and my friends a round of shots!”

“Zayn,” Louis said weakly, “I’m a recovering alcoholic,”

“Oh, right, shit! I forgot! A round of virgin shots, please! Someone! Does anyone work in this fucking place?”

Liam and Louis exchanged a quick look as Zayn continued waving his arm, demanding his shots, and then at the same moment the two of them started laughing, Louis leaning back into the booth as Liam collapsed into Zayn’s side.

For the first time since fucking up, Louis, for a moment, felt perfectly at ease.

*******

Louis didn’t mean to end up on the rooftop of a downtown building in the middle of the afternoon.

He usually didn’t risk going through with any type of assignment without the rather forgiving cover of the night sky cloaking him. But he out collecting information, tracking down another inside trade deal that involved a Wall Street businessman strolling down the sidewalk in front of this very building at four in the afternoon every Saturday. He considered just staying on the street and tracking him on the ground, but the guy was smart, smart enough to notice being tracked on foot. He even bothered to put on a sweatshirt and jeans to go do his shady deals downtown before going back to the office. Shockingly, most white collar criminals had something against parting from their suits, even if it gave them a more convincing cover. So Louis managed to climb up the building via a set of rusted-over fire escapes that hung into a back alley, and remained on the roof as he tracked his case’s movements, one street to another, nothing more.

As the mark disappeared from his sight, he pulled out his phone to jot down a few notes he would need when he came back with a camera and a plan and then turned, ready to go back to the street, get some take out for dinner and then go the hell home.

And then the universe decided to fuck him over.

“Freeze right fucking there,”

Louis wasn’t really planning on moving anyways. When he turned towards the back of the building he stopped, right as he was, at the sight of a tall, burly man right in front of him. He was dressed in dark jeans, a sweatshirt that looked like it was from the gift shop of a long-closed strip club, a large backpack and a ski mask. Oh, and he was holding a revolver right to Louis’s face, a few inches from his nose.

Of course, of all days, today was the day this apartment building was getting robbed and the thug who did it would come up on the rooftop for no good reason.

“Come on, freeze,”

“I’m frozen, mate,” Louis muttered.

“Well, come on, put your hands up,”

Louis sighed and held up both hands, tapping one foot.

“You almost done? I have a lot to do today,”

“Shut up the hell up,” the man snapped. His sickly pale fingers, covered in what were either poorly executed prison tattoos or even poorer imitations of prison tattoos, shifted on the trigger. 

“What do you have on you?”

“Absolutely nothing,”

“Man, don’t fuck with you, I know you’ve got a phone. On the ground. With your wallet,”

Louis didn’t move.

“Man, what the hell did I just tell you?”

“I’m thinking,” Louis said mildly.

Here was the thing. This wasn’t exactly Louis’s first go at being mugged. He and Harry had both gotten mugged at an Applebee’s in Times Square about five days after they had first arrived in New York, which, in hindsight, was probably their punishment for thinking going to an Applebee’s in Time Square was at all a good idea. And he’d been threatened with a cheap pocket knife more than once in the subway for the twenty-something dollars in his wallet. He usually just handed over what he had and moved on with his life. He wasn’t stupid.

But. His phone had his notes for several cases on it, information he both needed and he really didn’t need street thugs getting to if he was supposed to keep his credibility. Also, he had been through enough lately. He really didn’t feel like kneeling down for some prick with a cheap gun.

“What the fuck are you talking about, man? You see this?” the mugger waved his gun wildly and Louis snorted.

“Yeah, I see it,” Louis said blandly, “I’m just not intimidated by it,”

“Shit, man, how about now?”

Louis barely heard the first click of the trigger going into place before he had turned on his kneel and was sprinting towards the edge of the building, the edge that pointed directly down to the street.

“Man, what the fuck?”

Louis didn’t bother looking around to see if he was still in danger, because he definitely didn’t have enough faith in his shoddy martial arts abilities to get him through a physical encounter.

Instead, he didn’t think, or stop, or do anything.

He just jumped.

*******

Louis opened his eyes to light.

A thick sheet of bright, painful white light, broken up with shifting blobs of blue and black. And silence. Although it was the kind of silence that came when one noise blocked out everything else, which in this case was the thick ringing in Louis’s ears.

Then it all broke, and sound and images and every other sense came flooding in at once. His head ached, as did his back, and his mouth tasted like metal. His cheek was pressed to the boiling-hot asphalt of the road, and he winced and turned over, groaning. He heard a scream and looked up to see there was a crowd around him, most of whom were screaming or crying or at least breathing heavily, all while staring at him.

Great.

He managed to pull himself off the road, sitting up and rubbing the side of his head. Another scream. He managed to track this one to an older woman standing at the front of the crowd, dressed entirely in purple and clutching both hands over her heart.

“It’s alright, love. I’m fine,” he said. His voice came out rather hoarse, so he coughed and tried again, “Just a little banged up, is all,”

She screamed again. Oh well. He did try.

Louis turned his gaze to the car that was parked directly to one side of him. The driver stood right by the open door, gripping the metal tightly as he stared at one particular spot on the car. Louis followed his gaze to the hood itself, where there was a deep dent that looked vaguely human-shaped.

So, he had apparently hit a car on his way down. That explained a few things.

He looked back at the driver. The driver looked at him and froze.

“Hey,” Louis croaked, “Mate, c’mere,”

The driver looked behind him and then back at Louis, mouthing, “Me?”

“Yeah, you. C’mere,” Louis’s head was swimming from being upright for so long, but he still managed to stay up long enough for the driver to come over and crouch down to his level.

“Hey, listen,” Louis mumbled, “I’m really sorry about this, okay? And I’ll pay for the car. Just call Malik and Edwards, explain the situation. They’ll get you fixed up,”

“You—shit, man, you’re not gonna sue me for this, are you?”

“No, no, don’t even worry about it. Just call them, get your car fixed,” Louis groaned and rubbed the back of his head, “Ah, God,”

“You’re still alive,” the man breathed, “How—are you--—are you an Avenger or something?”

Louis snorted. It came out as more of a wheeze.

“Nah,” he managed, “Superpowers, yeah. Official membership to the club, no,”

He rolled over to one side, digging in his back pocket for his phone to see if it had survived at all. Of course, when he pulled it out it was shattered and wouldn’t even turn on. Cherry on top.

“Hey,” Louis reached out to the car’s driver, “Lemme see your phone,”

“Ah,” the man dug in his coat pocket, pulled out an iPhone and tapped at the screen before handing it over, “You’re still not gonna sue me, are you? I’ve got kids,”

“I’m not going to sue you, calm down. Just need to call a ride,” Louis sighed and let his head drop back down to the pavement. He closed his eyes, ignoring the crowd that was circled around him, and instead focused on the dial tone.

“Hello?”

Louis smiled at the sound of the voice, and then winced when a flash of pain rippled through his skull again.

“Hey, Styles,” he chirped, “I know I haven’t seen you in a while, but I need a favor,”

*******

 

“Okay, thank you so much for coming over. I’m sorry it’s late. God, I’m sorry. What? Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there. Okay. Uh. Bye. Sorry again,”

Louis blinked at the ceiling of the room, the red blotches that bled into his vision briefly making it look like his own stained bedroom ceiling at home. But he wasn’t home. He was flat on his back on a too-soft mattress in Harry’s guest room, with the thick designer comforter folded down at his feet and a series of cold packs pressed to his side and the back of his head. His skin was sticky with sweat and he was pretty sure he still had a grease stain on his neck, but everything ached too much to even entertain the idea of taking a shower.

He barely processed Harry’s voice, hushed but still clear on the other side of the closed door, and couldn’t hear the voice of the doctor he’d called at all, but he wasn’t worried. He’d be fine, probably.

A set of footsteps retreated down the hallway, and a moment later, the door creaked open. Louis moved his neck enough to look in the direction of the sound, and felt his throat tighten when he saw Harry standing perfectly still in the doorway, one hand on the doorframe, looking more than a little pissed off.

Physically, he would be fine. In every other aspect, he was kind of fucked.

“You idiot,” Harry whispered, “God, you fucking _idiot_ ,”

Louis winced, partially from the pain that had just started to seep into his subconscious but mostly from the words, “You said that a lot on the drive over, I think I got it,”

“Good. I’m glad you’ve got it. I’m going to keep saying it, though,” Harry crossed the room and sat down on the foot of the bed, still just watching Louis. Louis closed his eyes and turned his head away just so he wouldn’t have to look.

“I can’t believe you called a doctor,” he said, “Now there’s a fairly good chance I’ll end up in a lab by next week,”

“Don’t,” Harry cut in, “I know him. He specializes—“

“In what? _People with powers_? Jesus fuck, why are we so _interesting_ to people? There’s not even a real term for this shit,” Louis huffed, opening his eyes, “Anyways, he was a dick. And not helpful,”

“He just came for a diagnosis and to give you some painkillers,”

“I’m still bleeding. And I hurt,”

“Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere,”

“More specific,”

“I got hit by a fucking car, I’m sorry if it hurts in a lot of places,” he snapped. A coil of pain shot up from his tailbone and snaked its way to the base of his skull. He winced and softly hissed, “Oh, ow,”

“Alright,” Harry relented, his voice softening, “Just hang tight, I’m going to go get some stuff. I’ll be right back, okay?”

“Hurry, before I perish on your overpriced bedding,”

Harry made a soft sound and then got off the bed, leaving the room only to come back a few minutes later with a plastic basket. He set it down on the bedside table and started to unload some of the supplies inside. Rubbing alcohol. Bandages. A couple orange bottles of pills and a plastic water bottle.

“You know, any normal human would have a cracked skull and internal bleeding, at best,” he said as he sat back down on the edge of the bed, holding the rubbing alcohol and some cotton pads, “But of course it’s you, so it’s just a couple cracked ribs, and even those will heal in a couple days,”

 “That’s it?”

“That’s it, Louis,”

“Yay,” he cheered weakly.

Harry shook his head, unscrewing the brown bottle and pouring some onto one of the cotton pads.

“Did I tell you how you’re an idiot?” he asked softly, swiping at the cut over Louis’s eyebrow. The rubbing alcohol sizzled softly and Louis whimpered, closing his eyes.

“Yes,”

“Good. Just want to make sure it’s getting through,” he shook his head again, and a long piece of hair fell into his eyes, “I know you forget sometimes, but you’re not indestructible,”

“Actually, love,” Louis said weakly, “I was the sole survivor of a fatal car crash, had my brain fucked over by a sociopath for two years, and now I’m still here after falling off a building and getting hit by a car, so I’m pretty goddamn close,”

Harry paused, doing his best to glare, although it didn’t quite have the right effect since his eyes looked so wet.

“You,” he said, “Are the most insufferable human being I’ve ever met,”

“I’m your best friend,”

“That, too,” he admitted. He set aside the red-tinted gauze and reached for a sheet of band-aids, playing with the paper backing on one of them until it eventually peeled off, “Do you need a bath?”

Louis swallowed quickly as Harry smoothed the band-aid over his skin. His words brought that gritty, dirty feeling back full force, and suddenly he wanted to cry at the idea of being able to climb into a tub full of hot water and three of Harry’s hipster bath bombs. But of course there was the whole issue of him not being to move, and Harry would undoubtedly go into mother hen-mode on him and insist on scrubbing him down personally.

Okay. Maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

 _Fuck, not now._ He needed to sleep.

“I’ll be okay,” he eventually said, and Harry just nodded, reaching across Louis’s body to adjust one of the cold packs. It had left a damp wet spot on his shirt, but he elected to ignore that.

“Alright,” Harry finished fixing the cold packs and then reached for the orange bottles and the water bottle, “I’m going to give you some of the night-time painkillers. They should knock you out pretty fast,”

“Perfect,” Louis mumbled. He leaned his head forward as Harry held out a pill-laden hand to him, and then sipped the water that was offered him after he swallowed down the pills, “You take such good care of me,”

“It’s me paying you back,” Harry said simply, “Although, honestly, if you keep being a dumbass, you’re going to start owing me again,”

“I’ll do my best not to get mugged on top of buildings again,”

“Just don’t _jump_ , I think that’s where you went wrong,”

Louis laughed weakly and kept his head leaned forward, his elbow braced on one side of his body, keeping him up. Eventually, though, his vision was started to blur and his body felt heavy.

“Are these things kicking in?”

The words sounded perfectly fine in his own ears, but judging from the amused look on Harry’s (very blurry) face, he was probably slurring. He felt his head dip forward, and there was a feather-light touch on his shoulder as Harry pushed him back down into the pillow.

“Yeah, I think they are,” Harry whispered, “Just lay still, you’ll be asleep in a minute,”

But Louis didn’t want to stay still. Mostly because Harry was very, very close to him, and he felt very, very warm, and his lips were _right there_ and they looked very, very pink.

So Louis pushed back, brushing off Harry’s hand entirely, and leaned up and kissed him. Well, he tried to. He missed, though, so his lips sort of just landed hard on Harry’s cheek. Louis grunted and tried to pull himself in the right direction, but his vision blurred wildly as he did so, making it even harder to do anything.

“Damn it, c’mere,” he mumbled.

“What are you doing?”

“Tryin’ to kiss you, aren’t I,” he slurred, “Where’s your mouth? You’ve got two. When you get two mouths?”

“Louis…” Harry said carefully, “You’re on a lot of pain meds,”

“The fuck does that have to do with anything?” Louis blinked and squawked, beating his hands feebly against Harry’s shoulders, “Damn it, now you’ve got three!”

Harry pushed gently on his shoulder again, and Louis looked down. Harry’s hand was fucking huge. How had he never noticed? Holy shit.

“Just go to sleep, okay?” Harry said softly, “Sleep,”

“Don’t want to sleep,” he mumbled, although his eyes felt heavier every time he blinked, “I—“

He yawned and closed his eyes, leaning back.

“There you go,” he felt Harry’s hand on his cheek. His finger moved, and Louis blinked at the feeling of the letters on his cheek. S-L-E…

“Harry,” he whispered.

“I’m here,” he replied. E-P-T-I…

“Harry,” Louis repeated, “I like you,”

Harry shook his head, writing a few more letters. G-H-T.

“I like you, too, Louis,” he said just as Louis’s eyes closed, “I’m always going to like you,”

“No, you don’t—“ Louis yawned, hard, but he tried to get his mouth to close, so he could talk, so he could say everything he should’ve said forever ago, “H, I lo—“

And then the dark tugged hard on his vision, like a pair of curtains closing over a stage, and a moment later he felt himself slouch into a mattress and a hand dragging back down his arm, softly, gently, like it never wanted to leave.

*******

 

When Louis came to, for a terrifying moment he was almost certain he had been kidnapped.

The room came into focus in blurry bursts of light and grey that vaguely looked like a warehouse, and his steady headache and dry mouth pointed to him probably being drugged. And then the designer-minimalist grey and white bedroom came into focus, and Louis remembered he was in Harry’s apartment, and he had a headache because he had fallen on top of a car after making a ten-story jump.

Then he remembered he had attempted to kiss Harry and he suddenly wanted to climb out the window and jump all over again.

But he didn’t. Instead, he lay perfectly still on the overly fluffy comforter, staring straight up at the ceiling, and thought. And then he stood up and walked to the bathroom across the hall, turned on the hot water, and took a long-awaited shower while he thought more.

So he had kissed Harry.

Not technically. For it to be a real kiss, he would have to be fully in his right mind, and Harry would have to acknowledge he was in his right mind, and it would kind of help if, well, he had actually touched Harry’s mouth in the midst of all this.

So, he was at a crossroads. He could go out and pretend he had no idea what the hell had happened after he got dizzy on pain pills, and Harry could either keep him the dark or tell him he had tried to kiss him as something for them to both laugh at. Life could go on, and the weird tangle that had settled deep into Louis’s body would remain.

Or, he could be honest. He could say he remembered it, and that he had been serious, and he had wanted it. And that way, the feeling in his gut might go away, but everything else would be different.

Harry, the one thing in his life that had been constant, a rock in the waves, would be different.

Louis breathed in, opened his mouth, let some of the too-hot shower water tumble into his mouth just so he could spit it out again. He dipped his head under the spray and dragged his fingers through the tangles of his hair, scratching into his scalp.

He could always run, too.

He could climb out the window and run and never stop, just disappear again and start over, not a new person but pretending to be one, just like he had done before.

He wouldn’t, though.

He couldn’t run, because he didn’t want to anymore. The very thought of cleaning out his emergency account and booking a one-way ticket to wherever and then doing the same exact thing when the thrill and the distance eventually wore off made him tired. He had tried to run before and he hadn’t even gotten off the island, because he wasn’t meant to run. His body’s endurance was meant to break and then rebuild.

He turned off the water and stood in the shower until the hot water cooled on his skin and made him shake, until he had no choice but step out onto the tile and the soft whiteness of the rest of the bathroom.

Break. Rebuild. It was a toss-up, a risk, but he couldn’t do anything else.

Louis arrived back in the bedroom with his hair wet and a towel wrapped around his waist, and he surveyed the room. His dirty, blood-speckled clothes from the previous night were still in a heap by the bed, and he didn’t exactly want to put them back on. But there was something on the bedside table he hadn’t noticed before: a robe, folded neatly and made of blue-black silk covered in designs of orange flowers and white birds. Louis resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he unfolded it and shook out the fabric before eventually undoing his towel and pulling the robe over his still-damp skin. The robe was airy, with a deep dip in the neckline that hovered right over his belly button, and the sleeves that were a little too billowy and long for his arms. But Louis wore it anyways.

When he stepped out of the bedroom, the smell of food floated down to him immediately, sweet and thick. He followed the smell, feet pounding gently on the perfectly polished wooden floor, until he moved out of the hallway and into the main portion of the apartment. Pale sunlight floated through the wide windows, and landed on the furniture of the living room and into the kitchen. Harry was standing at the stove, wearing a nearly identical robe to the one Louis was sporting, only in a brilliant red color. He had a bowl that was filled with pale batter next to his elbow and he was singing, loudly, as he attended to a folding griddle that was set up on the counter. He hadn’t turned around yet.

Louis stood where he was for a while, partially collecting himself and partially just admiring the man that was his best friend, that would always be his best friend, no matter what happened after what he was about to do.

“I can’t believe you own two of these robes,” Louis eventually said. Harry started a bit but then just glanced over his shoulder and smiled. He shrugged easily and pulled on the sleeve of his own robe.

“Gifts from a guest on the show a while back,”

“I see,” Louis nodded. He rounded the counter until he was standing close by, enough to see that Harry was making making pancakes on the griddle and that he had a thin stripe of batter painted across one wrist, but not close enough to do anything stupid.

He took a step forward.

He was going to do something stupid, anyways.

“Do you just say that to justify any weird shit you own?” he asked, “Because if you actually just own these because you liked them and bought them on fucking Amazon, you can tell me,”

Harry just shook his head, curls bouncing, and flipped over one of the pancakes. Uncooked batter hit the leftover oil with a soft sizzle, the brown half pointing up the ceiling “They’re not even on Amazon. They’re genuine Chinese silk, from a private boutique in Beijing. Now, do you want blueberries or chocolate—“

Before he could finish, Louis reached over and grabbed the plug on the griddle, pulling it out from the outlet. The uncooked batter abruptly popped and then stopped sizzling entirely as the light on the griddle went from bright green to nothing at all.

Harry frowned, looking down at the griddle and then to the battered-covered spatula he still had gripped in one hand, and then, finally, to Louis, regarding him with confused eyes.

“What—“

Louis dropped the plug and reached over to touch Harry’s wrist, and then his fingers, gently prying them away from the spatula so he could set it down on the countertop. And then he reached up to grip Harry’s chin, pulling him closer.

“You’ve only got one mouth now,” he said softly.

Harry’s eyebrows creased, his mouth opening in an unformed question, and then his eyes went wide.

“Louis…”

“Last night…I meant that. I wanted it, and I still do. So…do you want this?” Louis asked quietly. He couldn’t tell if his voice was curious or desperate or terrified. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted it to be, “You need to tell me right now if you don’t,”

“Do I…” Harry began, but his voice died off and stayed quiet.

“Do you want me to kiss you,” Louis filled in, “Do you want…”

He fumbled. Harry stared at him with confused eyes that were quickly turning into something else.

“Do you want me?” Louis finished.

Harry’s eyes melted.

“I do,” he said softly, “But that doesn’t mean—“

“That I have to?” Louis asked. Harry opened his mouth, closed it.

The answer was yes. Louis sighed and tugged on Harry’s chin. His entire body moved forward, broad shoulders and long legs all pulled in Louis’s direction at one simple touch.

“This is my choice,” Louis said gently, “No one tells me what to do anymore. Okay?”

Harry breathed. Not deeply, but short, gasping, confused. And then he nodded.

“Okay,” he said softly.

“Good,” Louis said, “Now let me kiss you,”

Harry let him.

Well, he didn’t _let_ him. He didn’t just stay still and let Louis kiss him. Instead he gripped Louis tight around the middle, one arm encircling his waist and one hand planted firmly to his back, and dipped him, slightly, like they were dancing, and Louis surged up and pressed their lips together while he kept his fingers locked tightly around Harry’s neck. Eventually Harry pulled Louis back up but didn’t break up apart. Instead Louis leaned deep into Harry, keeping his toes raised on the cold tile. Harry’s lips were soft, the kind of soft that probably came from high-end lip scrub and rosebud chapstick, and they tasted like the ghost of batter he’d probably taste-tested before putting it on the griddle.

But that wasn’t even the best part. The best part was how steady his hands remained on Louis’s back, and how that tight feeling in Louis’s stomach unspooled, fizzling and dissolving in his veins, the nervous heat cooling to a content, enveloping warmth.

Eventually, though, he felt Harry’s mouth open wider, a single, shuddering breath passing into Louis’s mouth, and then he was pulling away.

Louis blinked, and Harry blinked right back. His too-soft rosebud lips were swollen, just a little bit, and he parted them to speak.

“We should stop,” he rasped. 

“What?” Louis said, “Why?”

Harry tightened his hand on Louis’s back and shook his head, his eyes widening just the slightest bit.

“No, no, not because I don’t want to. I mean, I want to—I want—shit, I want,” he rambled, and then shook his head again, “It’s just—if I keep kissing you, I’m never going to want to do anything else,”

And then the warmth in Louis’s veins kicked up a notch, heat blurting into his cheeks, probably coloring them. He didn’t care, though. He just leaned forward and pecked his lips on the tip of Harry’s nose.

“That’s why I took the pancakes off the heat,”

*******

Eventually, Harry put the pancakes back on the heat.

Of course, first he had to physical chase Louis out of the kitchen, because Louis kept trying to grab his hips or jump onto his back, distracting him. And then he came into the living area five minutes later with a full plate of chocolate-chip pancakes, set them on the coffee table, and then laid right on top of where Louis had draped on over the couch.

“Get the fuck off me,” Louis mumbled weakly.

“Nah,” Harry shook his head and a loose curl tickled Louis’s cheek, “I’d rather not,”

“You are going to physically crush me,” Louis mumbled, “I just _broke one of my ribs_ ,”

“You cracked it. And it’s probably healed, anyways. You’re fine,” Harry shrugged. He reached over to the plate on the table and grabbed one of the pancakes off the top, folding it in half and tucking it into his mouth. Louis just glared at him and then shoved his cheek back into the couch.

“You’re a monster,” Louis grumbled. Harry chuckled and leaned down, kissing him lightly on the cheek.

“Okay, fine,” Harry pulled himself off of Louis and instead leaned back into the corner of the couch. Louis wheezed weakly and then sat up, grabbing his own pancake.

“Seriously, are you okay?” Harry asked. Louis took a bite out of the edge of his pancake and then shot him a thumbs-up as he worked his way through the giant glob of batter and chocolate in his mouth.

“I’m fantastic,” he mumbled after he swallowed.

He worked through another bite, and then another, and when he was about halfway-through his pancake he looked up and saw that Harry wasn’t even eating, just sitting on the other side of the couch, legs draped easily over the cushions, watching Louis.

“ _Wha_?” Louis mumbled. The batter in his mouth swallowed the “T” sound and he chewed harder, attempting to swallow down what he could.

“How long have you wanted to do that?” Harry asked.

Louis gulped down the rest of the pancake and then coughed, weakly, his throat begging for water, but he ignored it.

“Um,” Louis said, “I don’t…know?”

“You don’t know?” Harry repeated.

“Well, I mean, I wanted to kiss you once, for a little while, when I was eighteen,” Louis started, “But that was, like, on and off for a month, maybe? And then, recently, not at all. Until maybe, like two months ago? A month and a half ago? Let’s go with two months. A solid two months,”

Harry blinked at him, and sighed, “You’re ridiculous,”

“You wanted an answer, I’m giving you what I can!” Louis snapped, but his words lost all their strength when his voice snapped on the last few words and he started coughing. Harry pulled his legs off the couch and stood, going to the kitchen and retrieving a glass of milk. When he handed it off, Louis gulped down as much as he could and then coughed again, leaning his head back into the couch.

“Jesus,” he huffed, and then closed his eyes.

Harry laughed, softly, and then Louis felt a hand on his right cheek, tugging him to look to his left. He opened his eyes and saw Harry was right in front of him, soft lips and bright eyes and red Chinese silk.

“C’mere,” he whispered, and then he leaned forward, his lips puckering and eyes closing, and Louis moved to meet him just in time for their lips to press together again. Harry didn’t even seem to care that Louis’s lips were still covered in milk.

When they pulled away, Harry leaned his cheek into the back of the couch and blinked at Louis, his entire expression soft. Louis tucked his knees up to his chest, curling in on himself, not even caring that the silk of his robe dropped down and pooled at his hips, leaving his legs entirely bare.

“So you’re fine with this?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Harry shrugged, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, I can think of a few reasons,” Louis scoffed, “A decade of friendship at the risk of being ruined, for one,”

“Why would it be ruined?” Harry asked. He blinked his wide, wide eyes and Louis honestly couldn’t tell if he was playing dumb or genuinely wondering.

“Because—Jesus, you know why!” Louis said weakly, and covered his face.

Harry’s hand tapped his elbow, softly, and then just gripped on, the silk of Louis’s robe crinkling under his touch.

“Louis,” Harry said gently, “It’s not just a kiss for you, is it?”

“Two kisses,” Louis said, and Harry nodded, letting him have it.

“Right. It’s not just _two_ kisses for you, is it?”

Louis shook his head. _No_.

“That’s what I thought,” Harry said, “And that’s why I’m okay with it,”

“You,” Louis said, sputtered, stopped, “What?”

“Louis,” Harry continued, “With you, I can’t have anything superficial. I can’t be your friend with benefits or anything. Whatever I have with you, it needs to be complete,”

Louis’s brain felt like it was moving too slowly, like he was underwater and words were moving slower and his vision was floating in and out of focus.

“What?” he said dumbly, and Harry squeezed his elbow again.

“I want a relationship with you, Louis,” he said, “Like, you like me, I like you, we want to kiss each other, that’s fine. But I need the relationship that comes with wanting that. Is that what you want, too?”

Louis didn’t reply. He stayed quiet, regarded Harry carefully, thought through it. Doing what they had always done. Staying over and sharing food and navigating the world, together, but now with Harry’s lips pressed to his, their fingers locked. Nothing stronger than what they had, exactly, just something different.

The warmth in his blood stirred at the thought.

“Yeah,” he admitted, “Is that—that’s okay?”

“Yeah, that’s okay,” Harry said, and then leaned forward to kiss Louis’s forehead, “Let’s be boyfriends,”

“It’s been two seconds, Styles,”

“I don’t care,” he said firmly, and then moved down to peck Louis’s nose, “Hey, let’s go to a movie today. Have fun,”

“You want to take me to a movie? Seriously? Are you going to pretend to yawn and put your arm around me, too?” Louis scoffed, “Also, do I need to remind you that I _broke my ribs_?”

“Cracked them,” Harry corrected, and prodded Louis’s side, with no reaction, “Oh, look, they’re all better,”

Louis smacked him over the head with the first throw pillow he could grab.

“I’m breaking up with you. You’re a twat,” he said. Harry laughed his barking, sharp laugh and then leaned forward, wrapping his gangly arms around Louis’s waist and burying his face into Louis’s stomach.

Louis just sighed and wove his fingers through Harry’s hair.

The warmth in his blood raged.

*******

As it turned out, being Harry’s boyfriend wasn’t that much different from being his best friend.

Louis still got plenty of texts through the day, the only difference was that they were dotted with more hearts at the end. He still went to Harry’s apartment a few times a week, but now they sparred and Harry kissed Louis’s forehead after knocking him to the mat. They took long walks while holding hands, practically holding a giant neon sign over their heads declaring they were together. Boyfriends, as Harry liked to constantly say just to annoy Louis. He didn’t want to say that he had longed warmed up to the idea, because he was afraid Harry would stop saying it if he did.

But really, there was barely a difference between who they were before and after Louis had kissed him.

Well.

There was one very large difference, but they took a while to get there.

They got there, eventually, after getting back from a movie on a Saturday night. It had been something showing at the small three-screen indie theater a block over from Harry’s place, and Louis spent the entire show pouting and snuggling into Harry’s shoulder and the entire walk back complaining about wasting two hours of his life in some surreal black and white dream.

“And _furthermore_ ,” he said as Harry dug into his pocket for his keys as they arrived at his front door, “Why was it even in black and white in the first place? I mean, you remember how pumped people in the 30’s were for color film. Imagine the crushing disappointment if they could see us today, completely neglecting the technology we have,”

“It was an artistic choice,” Harry replied easily, undoing one lock and moving on to the next.

“It was a shitty artistic choice,” Louis insisted, “You hated it to, don’t lie to me,”

“I didn’t hate it,”

“You yawned a lot,”

“I’m tired. You’re exhausting to be around,”

Harry undid the rest of the locks and then entered the digital code, and finally opened the door.

“Okay, you win, I hated it,” Harry admitted, “Does that make you happy? Will you stay over now?”

“I suppose,” Louis sighed loudly, and Harry just shot them a look. And then he was grabbing at Louis’s hips, trying to pull him closer.

“Get off me!” Louis squawked and tried to twist away, but Harry just laughed and chased him into the kitchen. He grabbed Louis’s hips again and this time succeeded in holding his grip. Louis laughed and wriggled weakly in his grasp, enough that eventually he slid across the kitchen floor and banged his head on the back of the fridge.

“Ow,” he mumbled softly, rubbing the back of his head.

“You alright?” Harry asked. He had one hand on Louis’s hip and the other was quickly tucked against his temple, sliding back through Louis’s hair.

“I’m fine,” Louis sighed, batting weakly at Harry’s hand, “I’ll survive, I’m sure,”

“Alright,” Harry pulled his hand back and instead brought his fingers just under Louis’s mouth, tracing his bottom lip with the edge of his knuckle.

“What’re you doing?” Louis mumbled, and brought a hand up to bat at Harry’s hand. They both laughed weakly as his hand limply made contact with Harry’s wrist, making him drop it.

“M’just looking,” Harry replied.

“Weird,” Louis murmured back, and Harry just smiled softly and shook his head, his curls shaking as he did.

Louis opened his mouth, ready to say something else, but before he could even figure out what he was supposed to say, Harry was dropping to his knees.

Louis felt the remnants of his laugh fizzle and die in his throat, and in the next moment the heady, pleasant feeling was replaced with something else—a disconnection from his body, like someone else was watching Harry’s too-long fingers skitter over the zipper of Louis’s jeans.

“Styles,” Louis mumbled, “What are you doing?”

Harry blinked up at him, eyes wide and blown and glistening. His fingers were still poised over Louis’s jeans.

“I—“ he began, then licked his lips, “I want—“

“You want?” Louis parroted. He blinked, his eyes suddenly going fuzzy before straightening back into focus, fully taking in Harry and his crumpled curls and giant eyes and the way he was _on his fucking knees_ with his fingers on Louis’s zipper.

“You,” Harry said. His voice was unbearably soft, and he trailed his hand enough that his giant palm was resting squarely against Louis’s crotch.

“Me?” Louis’s throat felt thick as he said it, but it was nothing compared to the newfound lightness in his head and the blood he felt pulsing thickly towards his cock.

“Yeah,” Harry pulled his bottom lip into his mouth and then let it slowly slide from between his teeth, even redder and puffier than before. Louis’s entire body felt hot.

“Want you,” Harry repeated, “Do you--?”

He left the question wide open, wide enough it could be finished in a thousand ways, answered in a million more.

But Louis knew what Harry wanted to say.

And he knew what he wanted to say back.

“Of course I want you, love,” he said, and Harry’s eyes glistened. Probably a trick of the light, raising his head a fraction enough to catch the soft light in the kitchen. But Louis had no problem imaging them sparkling like he was in a cartoon.

“Are you sure?” Harry whispered.

“Of course,” Louis said.

Harry’s hand slipped back up and his fingers undid the button on Louis’s jeans, and then the zipper was trailing down, until the denim loosened against his hips. Then the fabric was being peeled down his legs, to his knees, where Harry stopped.

“Sorry,” Louis got out, “Tight jeans,”

Harry didn’t say anything, though, just rose back up and set his hands against Louis’s bare thighs, and then leaned in and kissed the cotton-covered outline of Louis’s cock.

He took a deep breath, enough to make his stomach stutter, and Harry looked up, lips still pressed to the fabric of Louis’s pants, his wide, glistening eyes looking straight up at Louis, like he was asking if he could keep going.

Louis took another breath, and then he paused, an unwelcome voice snaking through his brain.

_On your knees, darling._

He blinked. It was soft, a well-worn memory and nothing more, but it was enough to make his stomach clench and his breath stop, at least for a little bit. Remembering the countless times he had heard those words. The sound of a door, the click of a belt coming undone, the way the carpet would bite his naked knees after too long, the too-hard pull of his scalp as an unwelcome hand pulled his hair.

This wasn’t like that. Not in the slightest. He wasn’t in a painfully new bedroom, he was in his best friend’s kitchen. And he wasn’t on his knees, said best friend was. And he was gorgeous, and Louis wanted it more than anything.

He let himself exhale, let his stomach swell and then recede again, and then he nodded.

“I’m alright, Haz,” he managed, “I’m alright,”

Harry blinked his giant, glistening, cartoon character eyes and then puckered his lips, pressing another kiss to the swollen outline of Louis’s cock, and then pulled away, settling himself back on his haunches as he reached up, carefully. He fiddled absentmindedly with the elastic of Louis’s pants, folding it down and back up again, enough that a groan mounted in Louis’s chest, and right as he was on the edge of snapping at him to stop being a tease, Harry yanked his pants down to his knees.

Harry stayed back on his haunches, looking at Louis’s uncovered cock carefully. His lips opened slightly as he looked. Louis had completely forgotten how to make his lungs work.

Eventually, Harry reached out and grasped the base of Louis’s cock, dragging his hand over it until he got to where the bright pink tip was pressed into the hem of Louis’s t-shirt. His hand lingered, his thumb rubbing the edge of the head as the rest of his fingers rubbed the skin right below it. Louis gasped softly and fell back against the fridge, his head knocking into the fridge again. He couldn’t find the energy to care.

Harry nudged his hand back down Louis’s length and then back up again, twice, and then turned his eyes back up and took his hand away from Louis, wiggling his fingers.

“Sorry, is that bothering you?” he asked. Louis’s head swam, and he blurted out a quick “Huh”, making Harry point to his own fingers. Louis had barely noticed that he still had a couple of his rings on.

“Not at all,” he got out, and Harry smiled—smirked, really, the little shit—and then he put his hand on Louis’s cock one more time, pressing his ringed fingers firmly to the skin so Louis could feel the slightly cold surface pull over his skin.

“O-okay,” he choked out as one of Harry’s rings caught on the tip of his head, “I get it, Styles. You getting to the good part yet?”

Harry’s gaze turned back up, his eyes going hard. Louis was about to ready an apology—how he didn’t mean it like that, how of course Harry’s handjobs were great, could he please keep going, maybe forever—when Harry opened his mouth and tucked the tip of Louis’s cock in his mouth. He worked his mouth down, quickly, until he got as much as he physically could into his mouth, and then he pulled off, just as quickly, and sat back down. His eyes looked back at Louis carefully.

“What the fuck was _that_?” Louis squeaked.

“The good part,” Harry said flatly, “You want more of that?”

“Do I want you to fucking deepthroat me again? Jesus Christ, Styles,” he dragged his head through his hair, “Yeah, sure, do it again. Or don’t. Surprise me,”

Harry sighed, “You’re impossible,”

That didn’t stop him from leaning forward again, gripping the base of Louis’s cock in one hand, and guiding it back into his mouth.

He stopped half-way down, working his mouth over the head and the top portion and then dragging his ringed fingers over the base. His tongue lapped at a thick vein that snaked along the underside of his length, and then slipped back into his mouth to probe at the twitching, swollen head. Louis bucked his hips forward and Harry just readjusted, his hand still working, his mouth still bobbing. Louis's skin felt hot and crackled with energy, pleasure that surged through his veins.

In the midst of it, the voice still managed to work its way until his subconscious.

_Is that the best you can do, Louis? What am I going to do with you if you stop being good for me?_

Louis heard it and his throat restricted. For a moment, all he felt was the carpet burning his knees, the rawness of his own throat, the sting of a slap on his cheek.

And then in the next moment the phantom sensations were replaced with the heat of his skin and the attention to his cock.

Harry pulled his hand away eventually and instead popped as much of Louis’s cock into his mouth as he could manage and then back to the tip again, sucking hard on his head before taking his mouth off entirely, enough to take a deep, ragged breath.

In that split second, Louis’s throat ached and his knees and cheek stung, and the voice hissed through his brain.

_Do you think someone else is going to want a boy who doesn’t know how to listen to what he’s told?_

“You’re so beautiful,” Harry mumbled. He had a thick smear of pre-come on side of his mouth, and he was slowly dragging his swollen lips down the length of Louis’s cock, placing a kiss right above the head, “Just like this,”

Louis felt tears prick at the corner of his eyes, and he closed them, hard, and bucked his lips.

“ _Harreh_ ,” he managed. His voice felt caged between something pleasurable and painful, and his accent coated his tongue, thick and angry, as he whined. Harry’s eyes fluttered closed and he closed his lips over the head of Louis’s cock again, “Harry, I— _shit_ ,”

He felt a heady surge of heat and passion pool somewhere just below his chest, and then pump down into his limbs and settle into the very base of his abdomen. He felt his cock surge weakly against the walls of Harry’s mouth, and then Harry was pulling back just enough to hold the very tip against his wide open lips. A few seconds later, the first thick white rope came, landing against Harry’s lolling, waiting tongue and a bit on his lips. He lapped at it easily, swallowing quickly, and then closed his mouth back over Louis’s cock as the next surges pumped into his mouth, down his throat.

Louis felt lightheaded.

It wasn’t just from one thing. It wasn’t Harry or his mouth or the way he used it or even that it had happened in the first place. It was all those things, along with the unsettling twist in his stomach now and the remains of that voice in his head, settling into the creases of his subconscious like the stubborn dust from an explosion.

Harry pulled Louis’s pants and jeans back up his legs, tucking his soft cock away and zipping and buttoning the denim again. Like nothing had even happened.

“So—“ Harry started, his lips stretched into another smirk, but Louis didn’t even let him finish. Instead he slid limply down to the floor, grabbing onto Harry’s shoulders as he went. He pressed his swimming head to the familiar solidness of Harry’s chest and closed his eyes, locking his subconscious into the steady heat that rolled off his skin.

“Lou?” Harry whispered. His hands closed over Louis’s cheeks, “Louis, are you okay? Did I do something wrong?”

Louis just shook his head, biting his lip. He opened his eyes and moved enough to look into Harry’s wide, concerned eyes. His pupils were still blown, turned on, and it made something in Louis’s stomach twist. Something else, something good that balanced out the bad feeling.

“Hi,” he murmured, and smiled. Harry smiled back, some concern falling away from his features, but he kept his hands on Louis’s cheeks.

“Hey,” Harry returned, “What’s wrong? Talk to me,”

“It’s nothing,” Louis muttered, “I’m overreacting,”

“Not overreacting if you’re upset,” Harry said easily, “Do you not want to tell me? Did I hurt you? Louis, if I hurt you, I need to know,”

“You didn’t hurt me,” Louis shook his head again, “Made me feel good,”

“Yeah?” Harry asked.

“Yeah,” Louis agreed. He licked his lips, “Really—really good,”

His voice cracked on the last word and he coughed, but Harry’s face had already crumpled back into unflinching concern.

“That was the first time I’ve gotten a blowjob in four years,” Louis said. The words slipped out before he could stop them, but he didn’t stumble through them at all. They were just _there_ , ready to come out.

“Oh?” Harry said. His eyes had gone wide again, but they just looked curious now.

“Yeah. That was—“ Louis swallowed thickly, so much that it felt painful, “That was the first time in four year I’ve—I’ve done anything that was actually for me. That someone cared how I felt,”

Harry’s eyes went even wider, and then, he managed a soft, “Oh,”

Harry dragged both hands down Louis’s cheeks and held them there, forcing Louis to look at them.

“Did you want to wait? I shouldn’t have—fuck, I—“

“No, no, it’s okay,” Louis shook his head, “I’m glad you did. I want to have that again. I want—“

The sentence hovered, unfinished, and Harry raised his eyebrows, “Intimacy?”

“Yeah, that,” Louis agreed. He hadn’t exactly forgotten the word, it was just a bit of a challenge to admit, “I want to be able to have that with you. I want it to be a good thing again,”

Harry nodded. He still hadn’t let go of Louis’s cheeks.

“Okay,” he eventually agreed, “But we’ll talk through it, okay? What you’re ready for, what we need to wait for,”

Louis winced a little bit. It sounded so clinical, having to break down something that was supposed to intimate and sensual into words and agreements and talk. But the more he thought about it, the better it felt. The thought of being able to have what he wanted, stop when he needed to, something slow and steady and solid.

“That sounds good,” he agreed, and Harry smiled, tightening his hold on Louis’s cheeks.

“Do you need anything?” he asked, “Some water? Food? A shower, maybe?”

Louis shook his head, snorting softly. He was fine, really. Would be fine, as long as Harry stayed with him, and it didn’t seem like he was planning on leaving anytime soon.

“What I really need is to know where the hell you learned give a blowjob like that. I mean, what the fuck have you been _doing_ these last four years?”

Harry laughed, “Well, I haven’t exactly been celibate the last few years,”

“Christ, okay, never mind. I don’t have to hear about your sexual conquests,”

Harry chuckled again and planted a kiss to the top of Louis’s head, cradling him closer to his shoulder.

“You sure you’ll be alright?”

“Yeah,” Louis said, and realized it had slid out easily, without him having to think about it, “Yeah, I will be,”

*******

Louis was alright.

Or, he was close to being alright. The early autumn heat started to wane and red seeped deep into the trees. There was a line of orange bottles on his bathroom counter, and he took one pill from each bottle every morning and swallowed them with a glass of apple juice before doing his work. He kept a journal with a fake black leather cover on his bedside table and spent his mid-afternoon breaks writing it in instead of smoking, even when his fingers twitched so hard his handwriting smudged over the pages.

He followed Leigh Anne’s instructions, dug as deep as he thought he could go into his own thoughts. He patched together pieces of things he needed to remember and wanted to forget. Lottie in her favorite pink blouse and the slightly too acidic taste of his mother’s homemade tomato sauce. Alex’s thin shoulders in his favorite black suit and the oppressive glare of the yellow sun on a vacation Louis didn’t remember. Bits of blue glass and a mouth as dry as the desert. The freckle on Harry’s hip and tremble of his voice when he sang and didn’t know Louis was listening.

All the things that had pieced him, bit by bit, into the person he was, the person he had been but never wanted to be again, the person he was slowly but surely becoming.

He swallowed his pills. He talked to Leigh Anne. He kissed Harry. He wrote until his fingers cramped and his pen bled. The air chilled.

Louis was alright.

*******

“I can’t believe you actually got it,”

Louis took another sip of his water and then looked down to where Harry was holding his arm, twisting it enough to get a clear look at the inked dagger that covered his forearm.

“Yeah, I got it maybe a year ago,” Louis said, “I mean, I got a lot of tattoos a year ago,”

“I can see that,” Harry agreed, running his arm over the rest of Louis’s arm, and then over the other. With the exception of a few, they were all new additions, things he had gotten after leaving Harry the second time.

Louis snorted and then pulled away, instead leaning fully into Harry again. It was another one of their past-dinner weekend cuddling sessions, and they had yet to get to the actual cuddling, which as far as Louis was concerned as a true tragedy.

“You can’t really blame me for not wanting to get it the first time,” Louis said, “I was a schoolteacher. I was going to get sacked if I showed up with a knife tattooed on me,”

“You could’ve just told them about mine,” Harry said, and Louis sighed.

“Yes, well, seeing as we already had at least four other sets of matching tattoos at that point, maybe it was a good thing I didn’t get it,”

Harry snorted and wove his fingers through Louis’s hair.

“Well, you have it now,” Harry said, “Did you stop being afraid of needles or something?”

“Not exactly,” Louis admitted.

The truth was, the first few tattoos he’d gotten were attempts to make Harry happy, even if making him happy meant getting far too many coordinating nautical tattoos. He had cried at pretty much every inking session, and every time swore he would never go back to another parlor, only to return the second Harry had another idea.

But Alex had hated his tattoos. He glared at them when Louis undressed or even when he was wearing clothes that made them visible. He always told Louis that he thought they were ugly, unwelcome things marring his perfect skin, ruining the perfect boy he had molded for himself. But Louis always thought it was really because they were permanent reminders of the man Alex had tried so hard to isolate Louis from. He could forbid Louis from seeing and calling Harry, but he couldn’t erase the importance Harry held in his life, the permanent reminder of which was stamped into his skin.

So after he had picked himself back up, between getting a job and getting sober, he had gotten as many tattoos as he could. He gritted his teeth against the needle and shuffled through the pain, all because with every ink stroke on his skin, he knew it was something that the man who had ruined his life would have hated.

He told Harry as much, causing the other man to stroke Louis’s hair even more.

“Is it weird that I like the idea of pissing him off?” Harry murmured, and Louis managed a laugh.

“Love, I think me dating you would piss him off more than anything in the world,” Louis said. He turned, enough to meet Harry’s eyes. The other man smiled softly, still stroking the back of Louis’s head.

“Okay?” he asked, and Louis just nodded. He found that the more he had discussed Alex, unpacked him in Leigh Anne’s office into an array of parts and not a single, lurking figure, the less he had control over Louis. The less the voice came.

Louis leaned in, and wordlessly, Harry rose up and connected their lips. They kissed for a while, Louis planted firmly in Harry’s lap, Harry’s hands roaming over Louis’s hips and the small of his back. They were the same places he normally touched—when they were kissing like this, or even just crossing the street and holding hands suddenly wasn’t enough for Harry—but for whatever reason, the action made Louis’s skin ripple with heat, Suddenly, a thick swell of heat wrapped over his body, making him dizzy. He felt his cock stiffen under his jeans, and Harry noticed, too, putting one hand on Louis’s crotch and then rubbing up, slowly.

Louis stopped him, though, grabbed his wrist and moved his hand back up. He blinked at where Harry’s hand was resting on his tummy, and then looked back into his eyes.

“Not tonight?” Harry asked.

“No,” Louis said, and then, quickly, “Wait, no. I mean, I don’t—“

He fumbled over his words. The sudden buzz of clarity and heat in his head collided, and he found it hard to dig words out.

The thing was, it hadn’t been that long since the start of this relationship, the _boyfriend_ thing, and yet, it had been far too long. Years of emotion, years of bonding, years of longing and confiding and crying and laughing. They crashed over Louis, hard and sudden, and in the moment, with Harry’s hands on him and his careful, soft eyes looking at him, a few weeks of kissing and hand-holding and dinner dates suddenly seemed unimportant.

What Louis felt growing in his chest was a need for something that most people would take far longer to get to. But he and Harry…they had been on this threshold for a while, had been inside each other’s heads and hearts and veins for years.

It made sense, and at the same time, it made no sense at all.

Exactly like them. “I want you to take me to bed,” he finally got out, “ _Really_ take me to bed,”

Harry’s eyes went wide, and he looked down at his hand, still splayed on Louis’s tummy, and then back up to his eyes.

“Are you—“ he asked, and Louis just grabbed his wrists.

“Yes,” he insisted, “Please,”

Harry just blinked, and for a moment Louis was afraid he was going to say no. And then Louis was being lifted off the couch, slung over Harry’s stupidly broad shoulders, being carried to Harry’s stupidly minimalist room. Their room. The room where Harry permanently stayed and Louis took up semi-permanent residence in now. Whatever. “I can walk!” he squawked. He slapped his hands against Harry’s back, to no reaction, “I should be carrying _you_ , if anything!”

Harry just laughed, though, and then Louis was being thrown onto the bed, hard enough to make the mattress bounce.

“You’ve picked me up enough times before, though,” Harry said, and Louis just huffed as he sat up and pulled his shirt off.

“That was when we were the same size. I want something to _brag_ about, damn it,”

He took off his jeans, tossing them to the side of the bed, and Harry just shook his head, easily removing his own clothes and then getting back onto the bed, hovering right over Louis.

“You can pick up me some other time, I promise,” he said. And then he leaned down and kissed the center of Louis’s forehead, when there was sweat pooling between the bits of his fringe. He moved down lower, pecking the tip of his nose, and then down to his mouth, dipping deeply into Louis’s wet, quivering bottom lip, letting his own mouth drag slowly over the pink skin.

He pulled away, only to bury his face into the crook of Louis’s neck, dragging his hands over Louis’s body, from his hipbones up to his chest, his thumbs catching over his nipples, making Louis squirm and make an aborted sound of protest. Harry’s arms skimmed under his arms, lifting them up, pinning his wrists together over his head, Louis’s knuckles skimming the cool wood of the headboard.

Louis’s entire body buzzed, trembling with the results of the request he had wanted so badly and yet hadn’t completely thought through.

He wanted Harry in this way. It was really the only thing they hadn’t done together yet, and he certainly didn’t want to retire the night with a pair of blowjobs and call it night.

But…this was something else. This was something he hadn’t done in a long time. Hadn’t _wanted_ to do in a long time.

“Harry,” Louis whispered, and he closed his eyes.

Harry nuzzled his nose deeper into Louis’s shoulder, made a shallow bite at where his collarbone met his shoulder. Louis exhaled, allowed his eyes to open and turn towards the ceiling. His throat felt thick, and his head was drifting, but he didn’t want him to stop.

“I’m going to take care of you,” Harry said, “Gonna take care of you like you deserve,”

Louis shook his head, listened to the way his damp hair rustled against the expensive sheets.

“What do I deserve?” he whispered.

“The world,” Harry returned. He traveled down to bury his nose in the gap at the bottom of Louis’s ribcage, setting a soft kiss to the top of his stomach, “Wanna give you the world. But I don’t know if I can do that, because you’re mine,”

“You’re a fucking sap,” Louis got out.

He only wanted to cry a little.

Harry flicked his eyes back up, his lips still pressed to Louis’s tummy, and then he was back up, cupping Louis’s cheek in one hand. His hair floated down and brushed the sides of Louis’s face as he hung over him, his lip poked out in concentration.

“Louis,” he said eventually, “I promise you I will never, ever hurt do you, do you understand? If I do, you’re going to tell me, right?”

Louis managed a nod, “I’ll tell you,”

“Good,” Harry nodded in return, and leaned down to kiss him, “We’re going to make it simple tonight. You following me here?”

“Simple,” Louis repeated.

“Simple,” Harry agreed, “You don’t have to do anything, except tell me what feels good. Do you think you can do that?”

Something curled in Louis’s stomach. He felt himself slip into a space just above where he used to go with Alex. But there was no opposing voice, no niggling feeling that he needed to go somewhere else. He felt warm, and safe, and like nothing else in the world mattered than this man telling him he was beautiful.

Louis was being a fucking idiot, and he didn’t care.

Jesus Christ, he didn’t care.

“Yeah,” he eventually said, and then laughed, “I’m sorry. I’m—shit,”

“It’s okay,” Harry said, “Do—do you need to think about what you want?”

Louis shook his head, “Why don’t you decide and then I’ll tell you what I think?”

Harry nodded, “I can do that, sure,”

“Okay, but one request. Pull this back,” Louis said, reaching up to tug on Harry’s curls, “Love this hair of yours, but it tickles like hell, and I can’t see that pretty face with it down like that,”

Harry huffed, climbing off the bed to go to his dresser and get an elastic. Once he had found one on the cluttered surface, he turned back around so Louis could get a clear view of him pulling his hair back and wrapping the newfound elastic around it before crawling back onto the mattress“Better?”

“Much better,” Louis agreed, “Now, are you going to ravish me or what?”

“Insufferable as always,” Harry sighed, “Turn over, please,”

He petted Louis’s hip and he turned over, willing. Harry’s breath lingered over his back, and he glanced over his shoulder enough to see the other man hovering, waiting, observing.

“I’m waiting, love,” Louis coaxed. Harry didn’t say anything, just shook his head.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured.

“You’ve told me,”

“No, really, just—“ Harry gripped onto Louis hips, his thumbs worrying over the skin, “I love this body. And all its strength,”

“It’s for you,” Louis whispered.

“For me,” Harry repeated.

“Yeah, love,” Louis said. He reached for Harry's hand and he took it, squeezing his fingers, “I’m giving it to you,”

Harry exhaled, and then leaned down, lowering a slow kiss to the small of Louis’s back, right over his bare bum. Harry’s hands skimmed down until his hands were parting Louis’s cheeks, and then he dipped his tongue in, licking a thick stripe straight over Louis’s hole.

Louis gasped and pushed back, burying his face into the twisted sheets under him.

“Good?” Harry’s voice came, and Louis just nodded and pushed his bum back even further.

“More, please,” Louis murmured, and Harry’s soft laugh came.

“Okay, Lou,” he said, and then he was quiet, because his mouth was right back on Louis’s hole.

He worked his mouth there for a while, tongue lapping eagerly, his lips pursing to suck at the sensitive skin. Louis kept pushing back, more and more, and then Harry dug through a drawer to find a container of lube, slicking one of his fingers and pushing it inside Louis as he kissed the heated skin on his bum. Louis groaned and pushed back as Harry worked the digit inside him, and then added another, pushing the two in and out, until Louis’s cock remained hard and throbbing on his stomach, just beginning to leak.

But Louis wasn’t going to come from this. Oh, no. He had asked Harry to take him to bed _properly_ , and that was what he was going to get.

“ _Harreh_ ,” Louis gasped, and reached a hand back, batting at him, “Stop teasing—just— _fuck_ _me_ , Christ,”

He heard Harry’s breath hitch, his fingers still shoved firmly inside Louis but no longer moving.

“Oh,” Harry said, “You sure? Do you want to bottom or I can—“

“Jesus, Styles, did you just spend fifteen minutes fingering me just to _ask me if I wanted to bottom_? _While your fingers are still inside me?_ ”

“I thought I would give you the option!”

“We’re breaking up. Right now, we’re breaking up,”

“Okay, okay, relax, I’m working on it,” Harry said. Louis huffed and buried his face into the mattress. Harry’s fingers eased out of his stretched hole slowly, and then the mattress was shifting as Harry reached back over to the bedside table. A few moments later, the sound of a tube snapping open came again, and more cold lube was being spread generously over Louis’s hole.

“You’re okay, right?” Harry asked, “Tell me if you’re even the tiniest bit unsure,”

“Harry,” Louis said carefully, “I’m fine. And I need to get fucked. So. Put the two together,”

“ _Okay_ ,” Harry sighed, and then he leaned down, his chest pressing against Louis’s back so he could whisper in his ear, “Breath for me,”

Louis managed a nod, and then Harry was back behind him, and his cheeks were being pried apart.

Somehow, the actual event didn’t feel quite real. Louis was, for a moment, hovering outside his own body, feeling Harry push into him slowly, buck his hips, hit the already sensitive spots. But he wasn't quite taking it in, instead absorbing the pleasure and at the same time not being able to take in the enormity of it.

Because there _was_ an enormity of it. A trust he didn’t think he could fully have again. A man he thought he had left forever. All at once. Floating through Louis’s drifting mind easily and without full recognition.

Louis snapped back to where he was, though, when he came.

The feeling ripped through him with white-hot sensation, and then he was pitching forward, gasping, ropes of come pouring over the sheets as Harry bucked his hips one time more and then groaned, slouching into Louis’s back.

Louis blinked, his vision coming back to him as Harry murmured to him one last time, asking if he was okay. Louis managed an answer that was some form of “Yes”, and then Harry pulled out. He plodded across the room, disposed of the condom, got a washcloth, came back and swiped down Louis’s body and the sheets the best he could.

Still, it didn’t feel real. And yet Harry’s careful hands on him, wiping him down, feel like the realest thing in the world.

“Alright, baby?” Harry asked, pecking Louis’s forehead. Louis blinked at him.

“Like when you call me that,” he mumbled.

“Baby?” Harry asked, and Louis nodded. It was new, but…he didn’t really mind it.

“Yeah, I like it,” he said, and Harry smiled, giving his back one final wipe with the towel.

“Do you want to talk?” he asked, and Louis just shook his head, instead grabbing Harry’s wrist and pulling him closer.

“Considering our cuddles got severely cut off, I’d say you owe me,” he announced, and Harry chuckled.

“Oh, really? Whose fault is it they got cut off, hm?”

Louis responded by slapping Harry weakly in the stomach with the back of his hand. Harry groaned, softly—Louis must have hit him a little harder than he had intended to, but that wasn’t exactly a challenge for him—but then just sighed and shook his head.

“Alright, alright,”

He got under the covers and pressed Louis into his arms, cradling his head, stroking his hair and his back, until Louis felt his eyelids grow heavy, not enough for him to go to sleep but enough to make him realize he was tired.

“Do you know I love you?” he asked eventually. He realized now that he had never quite said the words out loud. Maybe he had before, when they were teenagers, or university students. But not as boyfriends. Not in a way that mattered in an entirely different way. 

Harry just made a small sound.

“Yeah, of course I know, Louis,” he said, “And I love you too. I always have,”

“Always?”

“Always. In a dozen different ways, but always,” Harry said.

He said it like a promise.

A promise even Louis was incapable of breaking.

*******

Louis hated doing missing persons cases, usually.

But at the same time, they were the only bearable part of his job.

On one hand, staying in the shadows was what he was good at. He excelled at recording secrets from afar, quietly slipping them along, and never having anyone but his client list be the wiser. Stayer out of things was easy. Missing persons cases, however, required dragging a confused and angry teenager—or at least, that was usually the case—out of a random apartment and back to their parents. Because the thing about parents rich enough to hire a private eye was that they wouldn’t give up with a few pictures, an address, even a phone number or viable contact method once Louis had found their kid. They wanted their baby home again. And that wasn’t always easy.

But then there was the fact that it seemed like the only thing worth doing, most days. People could cheat on their spouses and deal with the fall out and companies could crumble because of shady trade deals. That was fine, he could care less. But something about a middle aged couple flying in from an entirely different state and dragging themselves to a shitty apartment complex in Manhattan, crying on the opposite side of Louis’s desk as they handed him pictures and talked about their kid’s grades and athletic achievements and how their smile could light up a room…that felt like something worth doing.

His current case led him to stand on the corner of a neighborhood that was more business than residential—of course, that was most neighborhoods in the city, but this one mostly consisted of liquor stores and delis that had a few to-rent rooms hanging over their buildings and not much else. Louis stayed outside one of the bars on the street—the biggest there, but not that different from any other place in the city. He went through some smokes and listened, carefully, until he heard the door of the bar open.

He dragged out his cigarette and turned to look at a guy who was leaving the bar. Louis readjusted his hood and tipped his head, earning a nod of acknowledgment in return. The guy looked over his shoulder and then ambled closer. Short, shuffling steps. Sort of attractive features in a pudgy face. As he walked, he dug into the deep pockets of his denim jacket and pulled out his own pack of smokes, getting one out and holding it up so Louis could see.

“Hey, man, can I get a light?” the guy asked, and Louis shrugged, digging into his pocket.

“Sure, mate,” he said, retrieving his lighter. He flicked it on and held it out, the flame catching on the tip of the cig as it hung out of the guy’s mouth.

“Thanks,” he said, “Hey, where the hell you from? Accent like that,”

“Doncaster, originally,”

“Shit, man, I don’t know where the fuck that is,”

“Not many people do,”

“Alright, shit, man, thanks. Have a good night,”

“You too,”

He watched as the guy crossed the street, towards one of the delis across the way. Louis looked behind him, and then took off, swinging around the corner and then ducking into a tight and narrow alley that ran behind the row of buildings on the main street. Louis extinguished the cigarette against the heel of his boot and then lifted himself onto one of the dumpsters that lined the back alley, pulling himself even further up by grabbing on the edges of fire escapes and some holes in the foundation where loose bricks had come out over the years, until he was at the window he needed. It wasn’t even locked, it just took a few seconds of jiggling and it was open.  

And then he was in.

Louis was there for a girl named Jennifer Bridges. Between what her desperate parents had told him and also what he had gathered over several weeks of research, he knew only a few things about her. She had been a student at Barnard College, extremely bright, studying chemistry and playing softball. A few months prior she had disappeared, leaving her apartment perfectly intact but leaving no clues as to where she could have gone, other than the fact that her friends had heard her talking about a new boyfriend coming into the picture she was rather enamored in.

Louis also found out, through much more sensitive methods, that her boyfriend was named Jonas Dunworth, and he was a part time Subway employee who currently had an apartment over an adult video store. More importantly, every Thursday night at ten thirty exactly, he went down to the ground floor of his building to meet up with his cocaine dealer, a man who matched the exact description of the guy Louis had just offered a lighter. They stayed there for a solid ten minutes, usually, chatting about nothing and maybe doing a line, which meant that was how much time Louis had to find Jennifer and get her the hell out.

He wandered around the darkened apartment, resisting the urge to flick on a light. Instead, he stumbled around as silently as he could, which was difficult when the worn-to-nothing carpet was covered in old magazines and empty cartons of Chinese food and cigarettes. Eventually Louis pulled his shirt up to his nose, the smell of smoke and something rotten making him dizzy, and began to plod along again, when a soft voice came out of the dark.

“It’s pretty bad, huh?”

Louis let his shirt drop from his face as he turned, slowly, and looked into the corner the voice had come from.A girl matching Jennifer’s description was curled up in the corner—tall, long nose, dark skin, braided hair—her knees tucked to her chest. She regarded Louis carefully, her eyes wide but not fearful, exactly, just calculating and curious, like she was too tired to be scared anymore.

Louis knew the feeling well.

“Hi, there, love,” Louis whispered, making his way across the floor. A stray magazine crunched under his boot and he winced, “Are you Jennifer?”

She didn’t answer, just kept looked at him, and Louis sighed.

“I’m Louis. I’m a private investigator. Your parents hired me to help you out,”

“Huh,” she said, “Well, that sounds like something they would do,”

There was something in her voice, unattached and yet dripping with the ghosts of sarcasm, that made Louis pause. He had never encountered a case like this. The creeping similarities to how he had once felt kept picking at him, making him draw closer to Jennifer and crouch down in front of her.

“How long have you been here?”

“Five months,”

“Have you been outside at all?”

“Not really,”

“Have you been hurt while you were here?”

“Yeah,”

“Okay,” Louis sighed. Jennifer hadn’t stopped looking at him steadily the whole time, and his stomach was starting to hurt. Plus, he was probably close to running out of time, “You don’t want to talk, I get it. But I’m just going to ask you one more question. Do you want to get out of here?”

Jennifer nodded, and Louis held out a hand.

“Okay then, let’s go,” he said, “We’ll talk when I get you out, yeah?”

Jennifer regarded him one more time, wide, dark eyes flitting from his face down to his outstretched hand. Eventually, though, she reached out and put her own hand in Louis’s grasp. Louis felt like maybe he should offer her something else, an ID or at some more encouraging words that he was actually going to keep her safe and not just put her in more danger. But honestly, if someone had come through the window of Alex’s apartment one day offering him a way out he probably would’ve taken it, no questions asked.

Jennifer had just gotten onto her feet, her shapeless grey dress shifting over her body, when the door of the apartment slammed open and the lights of the living room flicked on, dark yellow and unforgiving.

Louis whispered “Shit” at the exact same time a rougher male voice shouted “What the fuck?” from the front of the room. He let go of Jennifer’s hand enough to turn around, and as soon as he did he reached for her fingers to grasp them together again.

The man barreling through the door was at least twice his size, with a not entirely hideous face, even when it was stretched in rage. There was still white powder smudged on his nose and it made Louis’s stomach roll. Without warning, Jennifer had let go of Louis’s hand and was stepping just in front of him, and before Louis could even open his mouth to tell her to get back, flames snaked but Jennifer’s arms, burning yellow and hot enough to make the front of Louis’s shirt stick to his stomach.

That was another thing Louis knew about Jennifer.

She was happened to be the victim of a random chemical spill at a Columbia lab that left her with no physical deformities other than the ability to shoot fire out of her hands. It had been one of the final things her parents had told him, and one of the major reasons he had done his best to fit Jennifer’s case into his bloated summer schedule.

He just wasn’t exactly prepared to see her use that particular ability.

“Jonas,” Jennifer said. Her voice sounded detached, like she was doing her best to sound firm, but the word single quivered in her mouth.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jonas shouted. It was loud enough Louis was briefly afraid the entire apartment would crumble around them, “You think you can fucking pull this shit on me? And who the fuck is he?”

Louis sighed, stepping a little closer.

“Would it be cliché if I said ‘your worst nightmare’?” he asked, and Jonas’s eyes flicked to him, his coke-stained nostrils flaring.

“Man, shut the fuck up,”

“Jennifer, please, put the flames away,” Louis whispered. He was stepping closer to Jonas, who luckily still hadn’t made a move towards the two of them. Louis stepped, slowly but surely, in front of Jennifer, and she looked at him with wide eyes.

“Don’t,” she mouthed, and Louis held a hand up.

“It’s okay, I’ve got—“ Louis started to say, and then, out of the corner of his eye, saw the flash of movement he had been waiting for. He spun around, catching Jonas with a clean punch to the chest just as he began to lunge, knocking him down on the floor so hard the room shook. Louis leapt across the room and landed right of top of him, pinning one knee in the center of Jonas’s chest and holding both arms over his head by his wrist.

“Well, that went better than expected,” Louis sighed, “Don’t you think?”

“Man, what the hell? Get the fuck off me,” Jonas spit out, twisting his arms. Louis didn’t even bother strengthening his grasp.

“That’s a great idea. I’m just not going to take it,” Louis said, “Instead, I’m going to take this poor girl you’ve kept locked up in this shithole and--Jesus Christ, stop struggling, you’re making me lose my train of thought,”

“Get off me!” Jonas yelled again, and gave another twist. Louis sighed and rolled his eyes towards the ceiling.

“If you keep doing this, I’m going to need to hold you tighter. And I imagine you don’t exactly want two broken wrists, do you?”

“Man, what the fuck are you even doing?” the other man wheezed, and then cut his gaze to where Louis was holding on to him, like he was just beginning to realize that his attacker wasn’t even struggling, “Shit, you’re one them, aren’t you? Like her? One of those fucking mutant freaks?”

“You’re catching on quickly,” Louis said, “You’re smarter than you look, you know. Of course, that’s not really saying much, is it?”

Louis looked over his shoulder, where Jennifer was watching the scene on the floor with firm, careful eyes, not attempting to move. Louis gave her a brief nod and mouthed “Stay there” before turning back to the man on the floor.

“So here’s the deal, mate. I’m about to leave and bring her with me, and you’re not going to follow us. You’re not even going to know where the hell we went, because it doesn’t matter, as long as she’s away from you,”

Jonas grunted, hard, and then surged up, twisting his wrists. Louis loosened his grip just enough to make Jonas think he was breaking free, like he actually had a chance. Then Louis pulled one arm back, locked a hand over his other fist, and slammed his elbow straight into Jonas’s wide forehead. There was a crisp smacking noise, and in the next second the man fell limp on the floor, a bruise already seeping over his forehead.

Louis stood up and sighed deeply, wiping his hands together.

“Well, that went better than expected. Sorry you had to see that, though,” Louis said. He turned back around and Jennifer had her hands crossed tightly over her body. She didn’t even look scared, just cautious.

“Is he dead?” she eventually asked.

“Oh, no. He’s not. Would’ve had to hit him in a spot a few centimeters over to accomplish that. But he’ll be out for maybe a day, have a headache for a solid week after that,”

Jennifer nodded tightly, “Have you _ever_ killed someone?”

“I have, actually. But that was a bit of a different circumstance,” Louis said. He held his hand out to her again, “Now, should we go?”

She looked at his hand, and then up into his eyes.

“What’s going to happen after we leave?” she asked softly.

“Well, I’m going to take you to the hospital first, just to check if you have serious injuries you’re not telling me about. And then I’m going to call your parents and you’re going to go home,”

“No, I mean—what happens after that?”

This made Louis pause.

What would happen after she went home? How would she move on after this? Would she go back to her schoolwork and her life or would she have to find something else?

What happened after?

Louis didn’t know. He was still very much in his after. He probably wouldn’t ever be out of it.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, “Would you like to find out, though?”

Jennifer didn’t say anything at first. She just kept looking at Louis’s hand, and then up at him.

She took his hand.

*******

 

Louis brought Jennifer to the first hospital that came up on his phone when he searched for one, and then ended up sitting outside the small ER room in a blue plastic chair for about half an hour after she was checked in. In that time, he checked his email five times, ate three of the cheaply flavored lollipops from the jar on the reception desk, and considered apologizing to every student he ever taught that had had to sit on a chair as bad as the one he was currently using. Eventually, the door of the room opened, and the petite nurse who had helped him check Jennifer in stepped out, holding her clipboard to her chest. She gave him a small smile.

“Oh, hi. Sorry, were you waiting?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess I was,” Louis said as he got out of his chair, “Look, I know you probably can’t tell me, but, is she okay?”

The nurse shook her head so her ponytail swung behind her. Louis looked down to the plastic ID card clipped to the pocket of her scrubs and saw the name JADE printed next to her employee number and the name of the hospital.

“Sorry. I know you brought her in and everything, but…I can’t say anything if you’re not family,” she said, but then looked behind her and leaned forward, “But, I wouldn’t be worried. It’s nothing too bad,”

“Okay, great,” Louis sighed, “Um, speaking of family, have you called her parents? I have their numbers—“

“She told us already, and they’ve been contacted. But thank you,”

“Well, I feel rather useless,”

“Don’t say that,” Jade said, “You could have saved that girl’s life, you know,”

“It’s my job,” Louis said weakly, and Jade gave him a long look.

“Um, what’s your relationship to her, again? Are you the boyfriend?”

“What, me? Jesus, no. I’m—“ he swallowed thickly, suddenly feeling extremely out of place, “I’m a private investigator. Her parents hired me to find her,”

“Well, you certainly did your job, then,” she said. She sighed heavily after that, tucking her clipboard under her arm as she looked back to the door of Jennifer’s room.

“Poor thing. She’s not the first one I’ve seen in here, you know,”

“One, what, exactly?”

“Not the first one with, um,” she waved her hand in the air, like she was searching for the word.

“Powers?” Louis filled in, and she nodded.

“Oh, you know about those? Yeah, powers, then. We get a lot of them here, actually. I mean, some of them are just wannabe vigilantes that get themselves into accidents they can’t handle. But most of them are kids. Abuse victims, usually,”

“Really,” Louis said.

“Yeah,” Jade nodded, then covered her mouth with her hand, “Shit, sorry, I really shouldn’t—“

“No, you’re fine. I won’t tell,” Louis said, “Thank you for telling me. About Jennifer, I mean, that’s she’s okay,”

“Of course,” Jade nodded again, “Uh, I think her parents are on their way, if you want to get going,”

“Oh, yeah,” Louis said. He suddenly was back to that out-of-place feeling, knowing he didn’t belong in this hospital, asking questions he didn’t deserve answers to.

He trudged back across the slow-moving ER lobby, dodging past a homeless-looking man at the front desk who was demanding to see someone about his ear immediately. He grabbed one more lollipop for the road and ripped off the thin plastic wrapper, sticking the candy into his mouth as he got into the elevator. It was supposed to be lemon-flavored, judging from the electric yellow color, but it just tasted like stale sugar.

He worked it in his mouth as he rode down the elevator and out of the hospital, wandering down the sidewalks until he got into an area that was vaguely familiar. He made it through the twist of concrete and lit-up buildings until he just worrying the candy-less paper lollipop stick in his mouth. His apartment building came into view, finally, and he spit out the stick and headed inside.

All through the city, past familiar jams of traffic and clumps of businesses and hotels and apartment buildings, the thoughts of the kids Jade had mentioned followed him. It wasn’t a stretch to think of power-filled kids and teenagers being vulnerable, really. Other kids would hurt them for being different, parents who were off-base and unaccepting would do the same. Older ones, like Jennifer, and like Louis, really, could easily fall into the path of someone who wanted to crush their power or exploit it.

He stopped, his thoughts pausing with his feet, in the open doorway of his apartment. He took in the stacks of case files on his desk, the thin carpet, the thick, dirty yellow light that managed to fight its way through his ancient, sticky windows.

A small flame flickered inside him, not unlike the fire that had raced down Jennifer’s arms, and it grew, engulfing his veins, his brain, his entire body.

He thought of the flash of light and the unbearably loud sound of a car crashing into a trash truck. He thought of the sterile lights of a hospital room and the lavender walls of his room in the Styles family mansion. He thought of a long designer coat and a pale, thin lips surrounded in a dark beard and a snakelike voice. He thought of glass shards and headaches and dark nights and a camera clicking in his ears.

Most of all, though, he thought of golden-brown curls tumbling over parrot-colored shirts, soft rosebud lips and eyes that shifted from pale celery to evergreen. He thought of a screaming laugh and a gentle voice, clumsy yet careful hands and a warm embrace. He thought of Harry.

And then his brain settled on a single memory.

Harry in the middle of his old apartment, the one he had rented when he was still a student, spinning around with a homemade white jumpsuit pressed to his chest. The sleeves and legs of the jumpsuit were far too small for him—really, everything about it was too small for him, but it wasn’t for him.

“What on Earth is _that_?” Louis had laughed.

“Your costume!” Harry had giggled. He was definitely more than a little drunk.

“My costume for what?”

“For saving the world!”

“I’m not saving the world. I mean, I’m teaching the future generation and all that shit, but I don’t think that thing passes any school dress codes,”

Louis shook his head. Both now, in the present, and in the memory.

“Where did you even find that thing, love?” Louis had asked as Harry crashed back down next to him on the couch.

“It was in the NYU drama department’s reject pile. They let me take me after I interviewed the president about their upcoming show,”

“I think it was in the reject pile for a reason,” Louis had suggested. He had buried his fingers in Harry’s hair, then. It was shorter then, but well on its way to growing out, “Do you really think I could do that, anyways? Go out, put a costume and rescue people?”

It had been a joke—his voice, at least, had dripped with sarcasm—but Harry just looked up at him with wide eyes and nodded.

“I think you could, Lou,” Harry said. He had tightened his grip on Louis’s waist as he said it, “You’re a hero. Don’t you know that?”

There had been more to their conversation. Louis had tried to play off Harry’s suggestions and they had gone back and forth, until Louis had a couple more glasses of wine and Harry convinced him to actually put on the costume. It hadn’t even gotten over his bum, which only resulted in another hour of the two of them, drunk out of their minds, trying to yank the material back down Louis’s legs. 

But Louis’s brain caught on that last pair of sentences, uttered from Harry’s slurred mouth.

_You’re a hero. Don’t you know that?_

He didn’t move. He just remained in the doorway, fingers clutched tightly over his doorknob, eyes scanning the mountains of paper and clothes in his apartment, dotting the floor like the world’s saddest mountain range.

He wasn’t meant to do this. Louis had never entertained delusions of grandeur, never considered the idea he could be a real superhero and everything that came with it. But he wasn’t meant to spend the rest of his life crawling along, wallowing in his own mistakes and not doing anything for anyone else.

Quickly, he let his hand drop from the doorknob. And then he was sprinting to the door just down the hall, rapping hard on the door. It took a few tries, but eventually the door of Niall’s apartment opened, bringing the overwhelming smell of sweet smoke and the sight of Louis’s neighbor slouched into the doorway with wild hair and squinted eyes.

“Louis, the fuck are you doing here?” Niall mumbled.

“Hello, Niall,” Louis said, folding his hands together, “I need to come in,”

“Why, exactly?”

“Because I think I am about to make a very big decision, and I need to get very, very stoned so I don’t talk myself out of it,”

Niall just looked at him a little longer, until Louis was afraid he would fall asleep on his feet, and then he just opened his door wide and nodded to the inside.

“You came to the right place, then,”

***********

Louis heard Zayn long before he walked through the door.

It started with the sound of his voice, which was far louder than usual, probably because as long as Louis had known him during his law career, Zayn seemed to operate under the belief that the pure volume of his own voice could propel anyone out of his way. Then there was the steady tapping of his shoes on the floor outside, and then, finally, he was opening the door.

His head was still turned towards the door when he entered, talking to someone out in the hallway, so it took a few minutes until he actually turned around. Louis stayed where he was, letting Zayn be startled for just a minute when he saw Louis sitting on his desk, hood on, legs crossed.

“Louis,” he said, and Louis offered a tight smile.

“Hey,”

“What are you doing here?” Zayn asked, undoing the center button of his jacket as he crossed the room. He sounded more curious than angry for a change.

“I’m turning in my resignation,” Louis announced. Zayn just stared at him.

“You—what?”

“I said, I’m resigning,” Louis repeated. He unfolded his legs so they hung freely over the desk, and leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees, “At least, partially. I’m rebranding,”

Zayn blinked, “Go on,”

“I’m not doing any more affairs or inside trading cases. They’re boring and they make me hate humanity and really I’d prefer to take a break,”

“I—most of the cases I send you involve that sort of thing,”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Louis said, tilting his head back, “So, I’m asking to taken off your payroll. No more referrals, no more anything having to deal with me or Alias Investigations,”

“I see,” Zayn crossed his arms and regarded Louis, more curiously than anything, “And what, may I ask, are you planning to do instead?”

“I don’t really know, to be honest,” Louis shrugged, “I thought about teaching again, but…I have a feeling some skeletons in my closet could be dug up pretty easily with that one. I want to go back to school, maybe become a youth counselor. But for now I’m going to focus on using my stalker skills for good,”

“For good,”

“Yes, for good,” Louis nodded, “I want to help kids. Or, kids and teenagers, I guess. Young people with powers, who have been abused or hurt because of what they are. Get them out of dangerous situations and help them move on afterwards,”

He shrugged after he finished, “That’s my idea. I guess I’ll figure out the rest when I get there,”

“In true superhero fashion,” Zayn said, and Louis snorted.

“Something like that,”

Zayn just shook his head and set his hands on his hips, “Alright, then,”

“Alright?” Louis echoed, raising an eyebrow, “You’re just going to let me go? Just like that?”

“Well, sure,” Zayn shrugged, “I mean, if this is what you want, I can get by without a few extra files in my defense cases,”

Louis just stared at him and Zayn laughed.

“I’m going to survive just fine without you doing something for me you don’t want to do,” he said, “Besides, if Perrie finds out I’m holding you back from your journey to happiness, she’ll have my head,”

“Happiness isn’t really the goal yet,” Louis got out, “Normalcy, more like,”

Zayn just nodded and then sighed, circling around to go to the back of the office, “Get off my desk, please,”

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” Louis sighed, sliding off the surface. He turned back around to see Zayn pulling out his desk chair and sitting down at his computer, like normal.

Louis bounced on his toes, “So, you’re really letting me go?”

Zayn gave him a sideways glance and clicked on a file on the side of his desktop screen, “Tomlinson, if this whole display is just a way to get a raise out of me, you’ve got another thing coming,”

“No, that’s not it,” Louis shook his head, “I’m just—I don’t think the version of you that hired me would’ve given up this easily,”

“Hiring you was literally the only good decision that version of me ever made, and even he would disagree with me on that one,” Zayn shrugged, “I’ve changed. You’ve changed. It’s all good,”

“Getting laid as certainly changed you, mate,”

Zayn turned fully to glare at him, but his gaze quickly softened to fondness as he pointed to the door.

“Come in on Monday for your last check. Now get the hell out of my office so I can do my job,”

Louis raised a flattened hand to his forehead in a salute, “Yes, sir,”

He turned to the door, striding out as Zayn’s muffled laughter fell behind him. It wasn’t until he was back in the gleaming elevator, heading down, probably for the last time, that he took a deep breath. He looked up at the mirror that served as the elevator's ceiling, watching his own wavering reflection as he took in what he had just done, trying to find any shred of regret. He only found relief coupled with the familiar feeling of excited nerves.

He had a plan. There a few more things to do now.

*******

“Louis?”

Louis opened his eyes at the voice and only then realized he had fallen asleep.

It was a good thing, probably. He hadn’t exactly slept in the last twenty-four hours; instead going straight from his assignment with Jennifer to getting high with Niall to going to Zayn’s office and then calling his landlord. It would do him so good to take a nap, he just didn’t really want to do it on the floor outside Harry’s door.

He sat up, rubbing his cheek where it had been dug into the fibers of the carpet, and looked across the hallway to see Harry standing right outside the elevator. He was wearing his usual uniform a bright patterned shirt, jeans and boots, had a work bag slung over one shoulder, and a thick set of keys in his hands.

“Hi, Styles,” Louis said through an unwelcome yawn, “Sorry for coming on such short notice,”

“It’s fine—why are you out here, though? Did you lose your keys? Is something wrong? I would’ve stopped the show early to come get you if something was wrong,”

“No, no, don’t worry, I’m fine,” Louis assured him. He pushed himself off the floor and got to his feet, only to lean down and grab the duffel bag he had set to the side when he had first showed up at Harry’s building, “So, uh, you see…I kind of need a place to crash for a bit,”

“Why? Are you in trouble?”

Louis sighed and allowed himself to roll his eyes, “You need to stop assuming I’m constantly on the verge of dying,”

“Sorry, sorry. But, seriously, what’s up? Are they fumigating your apartment or something?”

“Not exactly,” Louis admitted. He shifted the canvas straps of his bag in his hands and steeled himself for his next words, “I moved out of my apartment. Bit of a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing,”

Harry’s eyes went wide.

“You _what_?”

“Well, I’m not technically moved out yet. I let my landlord know, but I’m two weeks away from my next rent payment, so I might as well just stay there until then. And all my shit’s there and everything. But, you know, symbolically, I’ve moved out,”

Harry didn’t say anything, just stood stock still in front of Louis with his keys still grasped in his hand.

“But why did you do that, though?” he eventually asked.

Louis took a deep breath, and he told him. He relayed the story about Jennifer and Jade and his idea for a different version of his business. His plans for using his back-up account to get a new office and maybe to go back to school. His overall sense of misdirection and the constant, newfound hope that sizzled in his body.

By the time he had finished, Harry had gotten extremely close to him and had put his keys away, instead just watching Louis as he breathed and stared right back.

“So, is there room for me in your spare bedroom for a bit?”

Harry stared at him steadily.

“No,”

Louis’s eyebrows shot up, and he braced himself for Harry to list out all the reason he was being stupid, to have their first real boyfriend fight in the middle of a lush apartment complex hallway.

“There’s room for you in the other half of my bed, for as ever long as you need it,” Harry said instead, and Louis’s mouth dropped open.

“Jesus Christ, you scared me,” he got out. Harry shook his head, his hair shaking over his face, the perfectly styled curls just starting to frizz from the hours of the day.

“Come here,” he mumbled, and in the next moment Louis was enveloped in his arms, his face firmly buried into Harry’s broad, cologne-scented shoulder.

“I’m so proud of you,” Harry whispered into Louis’s ear, and it made Louis hug him back harder and push his toes into the carpet of the hallway just so he could move up closer to Harry, as if in the fabric of his shirt and the slope of his shoulder he could find all the answers to the fearful questions that slowly crept into Louis’s hope-soaked mind.

The longer they stood there, the closer Louis came to believing he could.

*******

_A few months later_

 

“Hello?” Louis strolled down the sleek, brightly lit hallway of the uptown radio station, stomping his feet a little too hard as he did, trying to clear the leftover snow off his boots. One quick glance at his phone screen told him he was late, but he couldn’t exactly help that. He had been on the phone with Jennifer, catching up with how she was doing and wishing her a Merry Christmas, and then had field a few desperate emergency emails from the kids in his weekly discussion group, who he wouldn’t see again until after the New Year. He had no issue doing it, of course, he just didn’t want to be late to his own surprise party.

Okay, so Harry had told him it was a _Styles Hour_ office party, which Louis would have no trouble believing if Harry hadn’t been so pointedly insistent on Louis coming, and also if the actual party wasn’t being held on Christmas Eve, at eight-thirty at night. 

So it came as no surprise when he managed to find the actual room—the one he’d visited many times in the last few months to pick Harry up for lunch—and was immediately attacked with a gangly mass of curls in an ugly Christmas jumper, and assaulted with cheers and lights snapping on.

“Louis!” Harry was shouting right in his ear, and Louis laughed weakly and pushed him off, or at least far enough away that Louis could actually breathe.

“Hi, love,” he said weakly.

“Happy birthday,” Harry murmured into his shoulder.

Harry had, in fact, told him "Happy Birthday" at least thirty times over the course of the day, both in person and over text. But apparently it didn’t count without his producers and interns present with paper plates of cake and a roomful of balloons.

“Thank you,” Louis managed, and Harry pulled away, giving him a wide smile.

“Well, are you surprised?” he asked, and Louis managed a smile, not even getting the chance to actually answer before Harry was frowning.

“You knew,”

“Well, in my defense, you did insist pretty heavily on my coming tonight. And you also said on air to several million people this week that you had a very _special_ surprise for your boyfriend’s birthday this year,”

“I thought he meant a lap dance,” a voice offered from the corner of the room, and Louis looked over to see Niall camped in the corner of the room with a sagging plate of cake, “But this is cool, too,”

“Thanks, Ni,” Louis sighed. Everyone in the room looked vaguely uncomfortable, probably wondering if Niall just randomly wandered in off the streets, but Louis had made an effort to stay in touch with him after moving out of his old building, and Harry apparently wanted to honor their slightly dysfunctional friendship. 

“Move, move, move! He’ll probably be here any second!”

Speaking of dysfunctional.

Two seconds after the shouting in the hallway, the door burst open behind Louis, and he was shoved directly into Harry as Liam and Zayn barreled through the door, Liam holding several gift bags and Zayn cradling a collection of white cardboard tubs to his chest.

“Oh, shit,” Zayn muttered.

“Yeah, oh, shit. Hi,” Louis said, and Zayn huffed and set the tubs down on the nearest table.

“Sorry, Louis. All the stores were closed as, you know, it’s Christmas Eve, but luckily my boyfriend knew a nearby Jewish deli that sold ice cream,”

“It was all the way across the island. And they only sold vanilla and pistachio. But I didn’t have any other ideas,” Liam apologized with a smile, “Hi, Louis, happy birthday,”

“Thank you, Liam,” Louis said, and then Harry was behind him, wrapping his arms around Louis's waist again. Louis twisted around, looking over his shoulder at the rest of the people in the room, who kept just awkwardly watching them while readjusting the plates in their hands “Well, don’t just stand there on my account. Have fun. Or go home, or whatever you want,”

Half the room went home. Really, everyone but Harry’s several interns, Niall, Liam, and Zayn went home, which was understandable since Christmas Eve was a bigger holiday than Louis’s birthday.

Harry, however, seemed to disagree.

“Twenty-seven,” he kept murmuring as he pressed kisses to the back of Louis’s head, “Can’t believe it,”

“I’m old, then?” Louis asked, and Harry shook his head.

“Not old. Not yet. You’ve got some time,” he insisted, “How are your kids?”

“Oh, they’re fine," Louis said, briefly soaking in the warm feeling that Harry’s words brought. _His kids,_ "Some of them are having issues with their parents for the holidays, but I gave them some advice and a few hotline numbers. Hopefully they’ll be fine,”

Harry nodded and smiled as Louis spoke. Alias Investigation’s rebrand had been rocky at first, lots of lost income and a fruitless search for a new office space, but Harry had been nothing but patient, until Louis slowly built up enough cases to go back to doing his job. He even managed to set up a support group for teenagers with powers, something he was probably not totally qualified to do, but he was planning on applying to go back to school for a youth counseling certificate after the new year had begun.

This time last year, Louis was dealing with an influx of holiday business, spending his twenty-sixth birthday trudging around with a cheap camera clutched tight in his gloved hands, trying to capture people visiting their second family across town. And now he had a new business and was standing amongst a room full of cheap dessert and his friends and Harry’s employees.

“Oh, hey,” Harry eventually said, letting go of Louis long enough to wander over to the plastic tree in the corner of the room and grab a present out from under it, “I got you a little something,”

“This is, like, the sixth present you’ve given me today,” Louis said, and Harry just sighed and pushed the package into Louis's hands. 

“Just open it,” he insisted, so Louis rolled his eyes and tore off the paper, opening the box inside.

He blinked. Looked up at Harry. Blinked again. Then he reached in and took the contents out, turning it over in his hands as if he didn’t know every single detail already.

“This—this is my camera,” he said, “The one I broke,”

“Yeah, it is,” Harry nodded, “You, uh, mentioned once that your old repairman, Nico, had a thing for hoarding old projects, even if they were broken beyond repair. So I thought I might as well check and…” he spread out his hands, “He still had it,”

“Shit,” Louis murmured, “This…this is the reason I even came back to you in the first place, because I broke this,”

“Yes, I know. It’s sentimental and all,”

“I know, I get it. Shut up and let me kiss you,” Louis grumbled, and then rose up on his toes and pecked Harry's waiting lips, “Thank you,”

Harry just hummed in return, holding an arm around Louis’s waist.

“Happy birthday,” he murmured, "Again,"

They stood like that, wrapped in each other with a useless piece of machinery wedged between them, until Niall’s voice broke them apart.

“Can you two fucking stop?” he shouted, “It’s bad enough I’ve had to watch your two lawyer friends suck each other’s faces off for the last half hour!”

“Hey!” Zayn protested weakly, Liam mumbling, “Babe, he’s got a point,”

Louis laughed sharply and then broke apart from Harry. He held his broken camera in one hand and then grabbed his boyfriend’s in the other.

“Come on,” he said, swinging their joined hands together, “Let’s go enjoy my party,”

**Author's Note:**

> Be sure to leave some kudos and a comment, it means a lot xx
> 
> Hit me up on tumblr, I'm emperorbarnes


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